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The Immaculate Conception: A Theological Exploration INTRODUCTION That language breaks under the burden of mystery… is a characteristic of all language employed in theology. Of necessity, theological language teeters permanently on the brink of nonsense (McCoy, 2005, p. 16-17). Beginning this essay ...

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The Immaculate Conception: A Theological Exploration INTRODUCTION That language breaks under the burden of mystery… is a characteristic of all language employed in theology. Of necessity, theological language teeters permanently on the brink of nonsense (McCoy, 2005, p. 16-17). Beginning this essay with such a quotation does not imply a negative judgement of religious belief, but it does caution against a faith that is blinkered against other ways of knowing – a faith that refuses the testimony of experience on the one hand or the arguments of rational thought on the other. Faith and reason, said Pope John Paul II at the beginning of his encyclical, Fides et Ratio, “are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” It is clear that a single wing is less than useless: it can even be an encumbrance. Albert Einstein, in an addressing a symposium on Science, Philosophy and Religion in 1941, summed up the necessity of these different modes working together. “Science without religion is lame,” he said, “religion without science is blind.” Our task, therefore, as we explore the Church’s teaching on the Immaculate Conception, will be to allow a dialogue between the voices of faith and reason to bring out its full meaning, and make it

intelligible to any thinking person in the world today. Following the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that “sacred theology rests on the written word of God, together with sacred tradition, as its primary and perpetual foundation” (Dei Verbum 24), we’ll first explore the roots of the teaching found in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures and in various strands of the Church’s tradition. The intention here will be to clarify just what the teaching asserts and to dispel any misunderstandings. Given the caution we quoted above about the nature of theological language, we shall then attempt to frame the meaning of the teaching in a language that makes sense to the modern mind. While affirming the sentiment of Vatican I in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius (Chapter IV) that “reason,… given new light by faith, when it seeks enthusiastically, with deep love, and seriously, arrives at some measure of understanding given by God, … of the mysteries of the faith,” we shall also need, in a respectful manner, to open up the teaching to the light of reason and contemporary experience. Since the formulation of any particular teaching – in this case, a dogma – is intended to meet a particular need at a particular time, it is therefore normally not complete, or at least, its completeness is not evident. Who, having never seen an oak tree, can predict what the planted

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acorn will bring? The teaching may be definitive, but not the last word on the subject. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, like any other teaching, needs ongoing clarification and adaptation to the advances that have taken place in human knowledge since the mid-19th century. Pope John Paul II highlights the task of adaptation in his encyclical, Fides et Ratio (par. 92): As an understanding of Revelation, theology has always had to respond in different historical moments to the demands of different cultures, in order then to mediate the content of faith to those cultures in a coherent and conceptually clear way. Clarifying the dogma in today’s world is one side of the task, but like a coin, it does have another side. We can, in our investigation ask what light the cultures of today can shed on the teaching? Consider the impact of Hellenistic culture on the Gospel message of apostolic times. While the Scriptures told the story of God’s dealings with humankind in a historical way, the Greeks tried to penetrate into the meaning of life and the world through abstract thought. The Scriptures concentrated more on the question of God’s action rather than on God’s being, but the latter question had to come to the fore to make the Gospel accessible to the Greek world. With hindsight we can see how Greek ontology served the Gospel in explicating the nature of Christ in the debates and councils of the early centuries of church history. What then will be the eventual outcome of the meeting of this dogma with the natural sciences and a renewed focus on the dynamics of history?

NOTE In what follows, references to many of the documents of the Church’s magisterium are taken from Neuner & Dupuis and these references will be indicated by the letters ND with the appropriate paragraph number. Similarly references to the early Church Fathers taken from Jurgens will be indicated by the letter J.

THE DOGMA On 8th December 1854, in his Bull, Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX affirmed the teaching of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the following words [ND 709]: To the glory of the holy and undivided Trinity, to the honour and renown of the Virgin Mother of God, the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the increase of Christian religion; by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and our own authority, we declare, pronounce and define: the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by the singular grace and privilege of almighty God and in view of the merits of Christ Jesus the Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin, is revealed by God and, therefore, firmly and constantly to be believed by all the faithful.

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Why was it proclaimed at this time? The dogmatic formulation of Pius IX was the culmination of a long debate which needed resolution. Proclamation of a dogma is normally associated with the combatting of heresy, but it is difficult to argue such a reason for the dogma in question. Schmaus (1968, p.241) suggests that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception asserts the primacy of the ethical and religious dimensions of human life in the face of the growing secularisation of the age. There was also the growing tendency towards historicisation to consider. The world was no longer understood as a set of static relationships, but as a process of development, and for some, specific church teaching only had a historical relevance. It was useful for a time, but became outmoded, and consequently needed to be discarded in favour of something new. Popular piety also demanded it, especially since the devotion to the Immaculate Conception had become prominent since the 1830's when Catherine Labouré claimed to have had a vision of Mary standing on a globe surrounded by these words in an oval frame: “O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.” A voice commanded Catherine to have a medal struck depicting the vision. It became known as the ‘miraculous medal’ when miracles were attributed to its devout use.1 Much earlier, Bridget of Sweden (1373) had claimed that Mary had confirmed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in a private apparition2. Eadmer, an English monk in the 11th century, had defended the doctrine in his De Conceptione Sanctae Mariae3 even when prominent figures like Bernard of Clairvaux opposed it. In Eadmer’s opinion the devotion of the faithful was a better guide than the arguments of the learned. From this point of view, the proclamation of the dogma seemed to have been vindicated not many years later in the visions of Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes 1858. When asked her name by Bernadette, the lady replied, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

WHAT IS DOGMA? It is important first to understand clearly what we are dealing with. What is dogma? Schmaus (1968, p.229) defines it as “a saving truth of revelation presented as binding on the belief of all, either by the regular and general teaching of the Church or by a solemn definition of the pope or a general council.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church (par. 88) notes that this ‘saving truth’ is contained in Revelation or has, at least, a necessary connection with it. Dogma is, in fact, a statement of what the Church already believes. It is the crystallisation of tradition, and marks a transition from unreflected to conscious faith.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_Medal 2 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Revelations_of_Saint_Birgitta#Chapter_7_-_On_Spiritual_Clothing (The reference is found below this in Chapter 9.) 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadmer

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At the same time this crystallisation does not mean that the dogma is finally and completely understood. It is an ongoing process as the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation of Vatican II (Dei Verbum, par. 8) points out The Tradition that comes from the apostles makes progress in the Church, with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on. One can understand dogma as the ‘climax of the Church’s activity in the interpretation and explication of Scripture’ (Schmaus 1968, p. 227). The activity of interpretation provides the historical continuity between the original source and the present. A fundamental property of dogma is indeed its agreement with Scripture, but this agreement may not always be easy to recognise. Schmaus (p. 252) quotes Leo Scheffczyk as follows: In many cases it will only be possible to demonstrate in Scripture the starting points, the traces, and the organic seeds out of which the dogma slowly developed. However, we must always bear in mind that often the way in which these truths are found in their scriptural context is quite different from that in which they have developed in the soil of systematic thinking, so that they may be difficult to recognise in the later dogma. A useful concept in this regard is the sensus plenior which suggests a deeper or fuller meaning in Scripture than is expressed by the simple literal meaning. The development of dogma would then be the process of making this hidden meaning explicit. Dogma has a content, given, at least formally, if not explicitly, from the beginning in Scripture and Tradition, and hence unchangeable. It is the form in which it is communicated by the Church that is variable, and necessarily so, since it needs to be made intelligible at different times and in different places. Revelation can only be accessible and effective in us through our understanding of it. Dogma is in some sense an end and a beginning. It is an end in that it brings a discussion to a close. What had been an open question in the Church is brought to a definitive elucidation. But it is also a beginning in the sense that it gives a direction to the further development of the aspect of Revelation in question. Because a dogma is a human expression of divine truth its expression suffers all the shortcomings of language. Words are symbols, and as such, will necessarily fall short of spiritual insight. Although dogmas are statements of truth, they share with all the ideas we develop about God the characteristic of being more unlike, than like God. Hence there is no finality in the understanding or the articulation of Revelation which is a living thing in constant development. Repeating an earlier metaphor, who can predict the shape and size of a plant from knowledge of the seed alone? And if dogma is the flowering of Revelation, can one predict the fruit? Paul writes (1Cor 13:9-10, 12): For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophesying is imperfect; but once perfection comes, all imperfect things will disappear...Now we are seeing a dim reflection in a mirror; but then we shall be seeing face to face. The knowledge that I have now is imperfect; but then I shall know as fully as I am known. And the Catechism of the Catholic Church (par. 66) states:

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Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries. The full significance of the dogma today should not only satisfy the intellectual but also the affective dimension. In other words, it should answer the question: What difference does belief in the Immaculate Conception make to my life? The Catechism of the Catholic Church (par. 89) suggests “an organic connection between our spiritual life and a particular dogma in that the dogma is like a light along the path of faith, illuminating it and making it secure.” Our task in this essay will be an attempt to uncover that light. How does dogma originate? Our initial reflection on the reasons for the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception indicates two main causes. If one agrees with the theory of J S von Drey (Schmaus 1968:238) that it is a general law that truth is only known completely through the conflict of opposites, we can understand dogma as the outcome of a dialectic process caused by the conflicting movements of orthodoxy and heresy. Heresy too, has its place in God’s salvific plan. Piety, which is not static or ahistorical, is the other driving force. A particular dogma, as pointed out above, finds its full meaning in the context of the whole Revelation. But is every dogma equally important. Can we distinguish between fundamental and non-fundamental dogmas? Only knowledge and acceptance of the former would be necessary for salvation. Without going that far we can say that, on the one hand, all dogmas are equally certain as to their truth. On the other hand some are more significant than others for the whole of revelation and for salvation. The hand, by way of analogy, is an integral and important part of the human body, but the loss thereof, while impairing the person, does not lead to illness or death. I hope that the above thoughts will help to overcome the negative perception that dogma is rigid and unmoveable, imposing a burden on the believer, and threatening to human freedom. In what follows, I will try to demonstrate that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is in agreement with Scripture and that it is, and has been since apostolic times, an integral belief of the whole Church, though this belief has not always been a conscious one. I also hope to elucidate the dogma’s meaning and make it more intelligible in today’s terms. Furthermore, I would want to encourage the reader to explore the belief in the direction in which the dogma points, and recognise in that direction, not an imposition, but a real freedom. Lastly, in this exploration, I hope to uncover the real significance of the doctrine in the mind of God.

THE TASK: THEOLOGICAL METHOD Sacred theology rests on the written word of God, together with sacred tradition, as its primary and perpetual foundation (Dei Verbum 24). In the apostolic constitution, Munificentissimus Deus (1950, par. 41), wherein Pius XII defines the dogma of Mary’s Assumption, we find the elements of a theological method [ND 714]:

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...this truth is based on Sacred Scripture and deeply embedded in the minds of the faithful; it has received the approval of liturgical worship from the earliest times; it is perfectly in keeping with the rest of revealed truth, and has been lucidly developed and explained by the studies, the knowledge and wisdom of theologians. Karl Rahner (1961, p. 201) lays it out a little more fully: A truth of faith can be brought home to the understanding in various ways: we can find out what Scripture says about it; we can trace the historical course of the doctrine with the passage of time, and learn what is involved, both as regards its content and as regards its binding force on faith, from the examination of this long and often fluctuating history in which the Church’s consciousness in faith has come to maturity. We can observe the influence of such a doctrine on piety, liturgy and art, study that mutual interaction between life and official authority, theology and devotion, God’s eternal truth and the preoccupations of succeeding ages, in which the conscious grasp of this truth slowly reaches maturity. We can also quite simply try to see how the particular truth fits into the whole of Christian faith, how it derives its life from this whole and how its meaning and content can be clarified by reference to the whole. If we are to give the dogma of the Immaculate Conception a secure foundation we will have to see that it meets a set of criteria based on the above description. McBrien (1994, p. 41-2) offers the following eight questions to guide us: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Is the belief or teaching rooted in, or at least consistent with, the Bible? Has the belief or teaching been expressed and defended, at least in substance, by the authoritative witnesses of the early Church? Has the Church officially proposed this belief or teaching in council or through some other magisterial forum? Conversely, has the official Church ever rejected this belief or teaching in whole or in part, directly or indirectly? Is the belief or teaching consistent with other official teachings of the Church on related matters of faith (the analogia fidei)? Is the belief or teaching consistent with the present consensus of theologians on this or related matters of faith? Is the belief or teaching consistent with contemporary scientific knowledge (that is, with what we know about the “human situation”)? Is the belief or teaching consistent with our corporate experience of faith within the Church (the sensus fidelium)?

Our study will use the above criteria. Questions 6 and 7 suggest that we should place our judgement in the middle of the 19th century when the dogma was proclaimed. However, we can assume that the necessary consistency should still be evident today. An important dimension of the sensus fidelium is expressed in the liturgy and related arts, to which we should also direct our attention.

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The Vatican Council’s Decree on the Training of Priests, (Optatam Totius , par. 16), corroborates the above set of criteria in the way it advocates the order to be observed in the treatment of dogmatic theology.

EXPLORING THE DOGMA Is the teaching rooted in Scripture? There is no clear scriptural reference to this dogma and hence it is an obstacle to doctrinal unity in the Christian world. The Anglican communion, for instance, questions the wisdom of proclaiming the Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the Assumption (1950). The AnglicanRoman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC, 2004, par. 60, 61) states: We agree that nothing can be required to be believed as an article of faith unless it is revealed by God. The question arises for Anglicans, however, as to whether these doctrines concerning Mary are revealed by God in a way which must be held by believers as a matter of faith. …the phrases ‘revealed by God’ (1854) and ‘divinely revealed’ (1950) used in the dogmas reflect the theology of revelation that was dominant in the Roman Catholic Church at the time that the definitions were made, and which found authoritative expression in the Constitution Dei Filius of the First Vatican Council. They have to be understood today in the light of the way this teaching was refined by the Second Vatican Council in its Constitution Dei Verbum, particularly in regard to the central role of Scripture in the reception and transmission of revelation (ARCIC, 2004, par. 61). In addition the validity of these dogmas is questioned on the grounds that they were defined independent of a Council (ARCIC, 2004, par.62). We will therefore have to dig beneath the literal sense of the Scriptures to discover the roots, and possibly appeal to the sensus plenior, the "fuller sense" or "fuller meaning” used in Biblical exegesis to describe the supposed deeper meaning intended by God but not by the human author. Perhaps the key is to discover in the Scriptures the role of Mary in the mind of God. Discussion of the Immaculate Conception cannot occur without at the same time coming to terms with the concept of original sin. The dogma is in fact defined in terms of this concept. Therefore, how we understand and explain it will depend to a large extent on how we understand and explain ‘original sin’.

ORIGINAL SIN The sin at the origins of human existence, according to Genesis (3:3) is manifestly disobedience, a conscious and deliberate putti...