The Immaculate Conception is perfectly reasonable when understood correctly
2 min • Digitized on May 3, 2023
From A Defense of the Teachings of Mary, page 52
By St. John Henry Newman
I have drawn the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, as an immediate inference, from the primitive doctrine that Mary is the second Eve.
The argument seems to me conclusive; and, if it has not been universally taken as such, this has come to pass, because there has not been a clear understanding among Catholics, what exactly was meant by the Immaculate Conception.
To many it seemed to imply that the Blessed Virgin did not die in Adam, that she did not come under the penalty of the fall, that she was not redeemed, that she was conceived in some way inconsistent with the verse in the Miserere Psalm.
If controversy had in earlier days so cleared the subject as to make it plain to all, that the doctrine meant nothing else than that in fact in her case the general sentence on mankind was not carried out, and that, by means of the indwelling in her of divine grace from the first moment of her being (and this is all the decree of 1854 has declared), I cannot believe that the doctrine would have ever been opposed; for an instinctive sentiment has led Christians jealously to put the Blessed Mary aside when sin comes into discussion.
This is expressed in the well-known words of St. Augustine, All have sinned “except the Holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, for the honour of the Lord, I wish no question to be raised at all, when we are treating of sins” (de Nat. et Grat. 42); words which, whatever St. Augustine’s actual occasion of using them, (to which you refer, p. 176,) certainly in the spirit which they breathe, are well adapted to convey the notion, that, apart from her relation to her parents, she had not personally any part in sin whatever.
It is true that several great Fathers of the fourth century do imply or assert that on one or two occasions she did sin venially or showed infirmity. This is the only real objection which I know of; and as I do not wish to pass it over lightly, I propose to consider it at the end of this Letter.