Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, one of the most misunderstood Catholic dogmas not believed by Protestants. It is frequently assumed this is about the conception of Jesus. Not so, that took place at the Annunciation, celebrated on March 25th, nine months before Christmas Day.
No, the Immaculate Conception is about Mary, mother of Jesus, believed conceived on this day before her birth on September 8th. Nine months later too, you will have noticed.
The “immaculate” bit means she was conceived free of original sin, unlike the rest of us who, according to Catholic teaching, are born with the sin of Adam and Eve on our souls. Yes, we were born to disobey, banished from paradise, all because of a bloody apple.
That aside, you may wonder why of all the people born on this earth Mary was singled out for an immaculate conception. This is where logic comes into play. Christians believe that Jesus, being God, could not have been born with sin – original or otherwise – on his soul, God and sin being incompatible.
RM Block
Further, as time passed so too did the belief among some that Jesus in the womb could not have had contact with original sin either, so, therefore, Mary must also have also been conceived without original sin.
Then, in 1854, Pope Pius IX proclaimed this as a dogma of the church, a binding teaching on all Catholics, that Mary was conceived without sin. At Lourdes four years late, in 1858, Bernadette Soubirous said Mary appeared to her and announced herself as “the Immaculate Conception”, taken as a proof the apparition took place.
Soon a deeper significance to this dogma of the Immaculate Conception emerged in Catholicism, which defined the beginnings of human life as the moment of conception.
Prior to that it had taught that human life began with ensoulment – when the foetus acquired a soul. This was determined at “quickening”, when it began to move independently in the womb – determined at up to 24 weeks – before which removal of the foetus was not homicide.
That ended in 1868 when Pius IX banned abortion at any stage of pregnancy. In that he was being consistent with his proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception 14 years earlier.
Immaculate, from Latin immaculatus, for “unstained”
