MARY THE BORN SINNER

The Roman Catholic Church says that the Blessed Virgin Mary was without sin all her life. In Catholicism Jesus is sinless because of what he is, God, and Mary is different. She is sinless for God helped her to be. It has nothing to do with what she is or isn't. She was sinless from conception to death and after that!

The Roman Catholic Church also says that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without sin. The Church because our representative Adam sinned against God we as a result are conceived as sinners.  Mary was an exception and lived a sinless life as a result of being conceived and born holy. She is the Queen of Heaven and she is the person who is the highest of God’s creatures and she reigns over the angels.

The Church says she was the Mother of God when she gave birth to Jesus Christ who was conceived without a man and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Mary was supposedly a lifelong virgin and had no other children. God took her body to heaven so she is there now. But was Mary really that holy? If Mary was a bad woman or nothing special, that shows believers in the supernatural that her deceiving spirit may have appeared at places like Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje while pretending to be the sinless Queen of Heaven. She would be seen as a demon from Hell appearing to mislead people and to get honoured.

The Church denies it invents new doctrines and claims to preserve everything exactly as the apostles of Jesus gave it. The Church has invented the doctrine despite claiming that it was implied by its tradition, the tradition that God gave the apostles, from the start. If it had been, why did nobody think of saying that Jesus saved all including Mary and she had an advance redemption which was how she never was tainted with sin? Nobody thought of it until Duns Scotus (page 316, Can We Save the Catholic Church? Hans Kung). Those who believed Mary was born sinless prior to his time thought she didn't need a saviour. The doctrine they had is very different from the current doctrine. In other words, we would be hearing of the advance redemption before Scotus if the doctrine was really endorsed by tradition going back to the apostles.

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION DOGMA

The Immaculate Conception doctrine became popular rather late on in the Church.  However, the Council of Trent didn’t comment on whether Mary had original sin. It said it was not thinking of her when it said that all had original sin. So did she have it or did she not?  A pope would step in.

In 1854, Pope Pius IX infallibly proclaimed that the Virgin Mary had been conceived without sin and lived without sin all her life. From that day, belief in the doctrine is binding on Catholics and they are obligated to believe in it and it is necessary for salvation. Infallibility only works if tradition states that the doctrine is true. But the closest tradition to Jesus and the apostles actually refutes the proclamation.

He declared that Roman Catholics have to believe, to avoid sin and be proper Catholics, that when the Virgin Mary was conceived in her mother’s womb that she did not contract the guilt or moral weaknesses inherited from Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, which are called original sin. She never sinned during her life though the Church says that she could have. God gave her wonderful graces so that she resisted temptation to the degree that she never committed even the slightest sin. This is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

THE ASSUMPTION OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

The infallibly proclaimed doctrine that Mary never had original sin is not implied by Catholic revelation which presupposes that no new dogma can be devised. The dogma must either be implicitly or explicitly in revelation before it can be made binding on the consciences of the Catholics.

The Bible doesn’t even mention the doctrine.

Genesis 3:15 is supposed to say that a woman will crush the head of the snake who is alleged to be the Devil. Catholics in the past altered the he will crush the head to she will crush the head even though it was admitted that the masculine reading is in the original Hebrew (page 49, The Mother of God and Our Interior Life). Some sought to justify this interpretation by saying that the seed of the woman meant a saving woman had to be involved to have the male seed or person who was going to pulverise the serpent’s skull. But Mary could crush the head by bearing the saviour and not by coming into existence without sin. God said that the serpent would crawl on its belly all its life and since everybody knows there is no immortal talking snake wriggling about the author of the story would have believed that the snake died in Eve’s lifetime. Mary and even Jesus could not fulfil the prophecy because they were born too late.

Catholicism says that since the prophet Jeremiah and John the Baptist were cleansed of sin before birth that it is reasonable that the same happened to the mother of Christ (page 55-57, The Mother of God and Our Interior Life). But the Bible only said that God knew Jeremiah before he was born and that John the Baptist leaped for joy in the womb when the pregnant Mary let Elizabeth his mother. It does not say that these were born sinless. If they were it would not prove that Mary was purified at the moment of her conception for they would have been done at a later state of foetal development. And also, even if they were born sinless that does not prove that the mother of Christ had to be sinless for she was not a prophet of God like they were. And see how Rome conveniently drops its claim that God lets us become sinners for a purpose that we cannot understand here. It should be saying we do not know if Mary would have been made sinless for we do not know God’s plans.

Rome imagines that she has found in Luke 1:28, where the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she was full of grace, a proof that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is biblical and was known to the apostles. This is not right for Rome says that there are moments when we are full of grace like when we have perfect contrition. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:41) so why don’t they say she was sinless too? Samson was a sinner yet the Bible says he was full of grace. A person being filled with grace and Luke says that Jesus was full of wisdom (2:40) and then that he had to increase in wisdom (2:52). The full is not literal just like a lot of our own expressions are not. Back to full of grace which translates kecharitomene it can simply mean, “Be joyful O Highly favoured” (page 8, Treasures from God’s Storehouse). Full of grace is the same as being full of the Spirit for a good alternative to the word grace is “having God’s helpful presence”.

The angel tells her she will have a baby and she answers that she is the handmaid of the Lord and his will be done.  Catholics read consent to the pregnancy into this but it could be read as resignation in the face of the unavoidable.  It says nothing about whether Mary was really holy and obedient.  Sinful women all seen themselves as handmaids of God, just bad ones.  The notion that Mary saved us by consenting to have Jesus is even more foundational than the Immaculate Conception but it is not in the Bible either.

If Catholics are right to say that Mary must have been sinless when she was full of grace (Luke 1:28) that does not prove that she never carried original sin. Maybe she became immaculate then. But the context says she was full of grace for the Lord was with her to give her his Son in her womb. She was full of the grace to bear the Son of God. That says nothing about her being perfect in every other way. Mary would not have been troubled by the angel’s greeting if she had been free from sin and that was what he had meant. She was scared because she saw that it hinted something she was afraid she might not like. Mary’s fear was a sin for it is a sin to be afraid when God has a plan for you.

Tradition does not comfort believers in Marian impeccability. There was and is no evidence that it was taught by the apostles. The idea was first suggested by Gnostics who regarded Mary as an incarnation of the wisdom of God and therefore sinless (page 34, Traditional Doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church Examined). All the early fathers took the line that Mary was conceived in original sin for she was born of sex (Vicars of Christ, page 333). And reason said that if Jesus needed a sinless mother to be born free from original sin that God could have preserved him from it the way the pope said he did Mary. Pope Pius IX infallibly declared Mary to be sinless at her conception. He was guessing. He was not infallible.

Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Ephrem and Tertullian contrasting Eve who brought spiritual death on us and Mary who gave us spiritual life by giving us the saviour is supposed to verify the Immaculate Conception doctrine (page 53, The Mother of God and Our Interior Life). This is obviously not what the words say. Mary could have been a sinner and still have given us a divine life in Jesus by giving us Jesus which would be reversing what Eve did in bringing death. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was not known before the fourth century for that is as far back as the Church can go to get a quote to prove it was taught (question 769, Radio Replies, Vol. 1).

The main reason the Church came to believe that Mary must have been conceived without sin was because she was surmised to be the new Eve. Unlike the old Eve she was sinless (page 15, Why Be a Catholic?). Eve was made without sin and so was Mary but Eve chose sin and Mary didn’t. But even if she was the new Eve, there is no reason to hold that Mary never ever sinned. And Eve was the literal mother of all the living and Mary figurative. She is not really our mother. Eve was the wife of Adam but Mary was not the wife of Jesus. The analogy is pure fiction. Mary is not the new Eve.

Irenaeus said that Jesus had to put his mother in her place for pressuring him to do something about the wine shortage at the Cana wedding. Tertullian said that Jesus had to chastise Mary for unbelief. Origen, St Basil the Great and St Jerome even went as far as to say that the sword that Simeon said would pierce the soul of Mary was a symbol for unbelief which was universally regarded as a sin in the Church in those days and still is among knowledgeable Christians. Augustine said that Mary and her family hindered Jesus when they came looking for him on one occasion and so Jesus refused to meet with them for that reason to teach them and us a lesson..

Augustine imbibed pagan delusions so his assertion that it is an insult to Christ to say that Mary could have been a sinner doesn’t mean a thing (De Natura et Gratia, 36:42). Anyway, it did not appear early enough to pass for authorative tradition.

There is no decent evidence that the early Church thought Mary came into existence without original sin.

THE MACULATE CONCEPTION

Not only is there no evidence for the Virgin Mary being conceived without sin and never being tainted by any sin there is positive evidence against it.
 
Catholicism says that Mary was redeemed like the rest of us. She said that in the Magnificat that God was her saviour. It is thought that if Mary did not contract sin at her conception she could not have been redeemed. Duns Scotus answered that you can redeem a person from pain by curing his wound and you are still redeeming a person if you shield him from the affliction of the wound in the first place (page 56, The Mother of God and Our Interior Life). But God does not have to impute original sin. God causes the contraction of original sin for a natural law cannot impute sin to you for only God can blame you for sin. The idea of God protecting Mary from himself is laughable. You do not say you protected your child from a slap when you refuse to hit her. The dogma of the sinless conception denies that Mary was redeemed or bought by Jesus’ vicarious atonement and is contradicted by Mary saying to Elizabeth that God saved her.

The Catholics often suppose that Jesus had to be raised by a sinless woman as if God couldn’t preserve him from the influence of a sinful mother. This is a strange supposition considering that Mary’s mother wasn’t sinless and Mary, according to Roman Catholicism, was.

Jesus might have chosen an exceptionally wicked woman to be his mother so that all who perceived his holiness would marvel at the grace of God that kept him from turning out like her.
Mary is not a great role-model. She is a turn-off if you go to her for her inspirational example. As Buddha's disciple Ananda said, you may have to let yourself be a little haughty in order to overcome haughtiness. Real men and real women need to do wrong to a point to stop doing wrong. If you abstain from food because you are dieting, food is all you will think about. Better to eat a little at least. Same and sane principle.

Romish teaching is, “The ultimate reason why one person is better than another is that God loves him more” (page 27, The Mother of God and Our Interior Life). So, God loved Mary more than anybody else because he made her perfect. Mary was loved not because of what she would do but because she was to be the mother of Christ. It would be mistaken to say it was for the first reason for God could make us all perfect for he loves us for we will all be perfect. So, God is arbitrary. He denies the fact that good is what does the least damage and is in favour of the perversion that there are good works that are above the call of duty.

Catholics say it is more important to give birth to the saviour than to be sinless (page 20, The Mother of God and Our Interior Life). They argue that Luke 11:27,28 where Jesus says it is more important to do good than to give birth to him, does not disprove this. Jesus was answering a woman who did not believe he was God and his meaning was that it is more important to obey God than to give birth to a non-divine Jesus. It that explanation credible? If it were right Jesus would have said, “If I am a mere man then it is more important to love God than to make me”. The Catholics don’t give the straightforward interpretation so it is the wrong one. If Jesus could only be born of a perfect lady it would be more important to be holy than to have him for you can’t have him unless you are perfected in love first.

It is asserted that Mary did not merit the right to give birth to Jesus (page 23, The Mother of God and Our Interior Life). This is horrendously silly if she really was sinless. It means God doesn’t have to acknowledge holiness!

THE DOCTRINE CALLS GOD EVIL

If Mary could be conceived without sin and live a sinless life because of that then the rest of the human race should have had Immaculate Conceptions too. God could have no purpose that justifies him causing our sin by making us born in it. “Far from diminishing her liberty or free will, the effect of this preservation from sin was to confer on her full liberty in the order of moral goodness, with no inclination to evil” (page 65, The Mother of God and Our Interior Life). God gave us free will so we could make a choice but Rome speaks of Mary’s merits so being sinless makes you more free. This contradicts the free will argument that God is right to let us be able to sin. The God of Rome is the Devil. No he is worse. The Devil only tempts you to sin but God inclines you to sin.

The doctrine says that God is evil. God is maligned in order to magnify Mary. No lies from the Church that it is not insulting God help change our minds. The Church cannot admit it outwardly but its doctrine speaks: God is evil and damned us all to sin but Mary for he wanted to make her his idol. The answer to the Church's protestations is: "But you just told me!!"
  
Conclusion
 
If the teaching of original sin is true, Mary had it just like the rest of us.