Celebrating the anniversary of a Marian dogma

Pope John Paul II is leading celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Are these celebrations reverberating in local churches adding new enthusiasm for the importance of Our Lady in the life of all believers?

When Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma in 1854, he cited two key biblical sources. The Book of Genesis relates that God told the serpent that he would "put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head." Pope Pius and others saw this as a prophecy of the Immaculate Conception.

Scriptural studies since that day tend to consider that the translation used at the time of Pius IX - "She will crush your head" - is inaccurate.

But there was also another passage quoted by Pope Pius. This was St Luke's account of the Annunciation. The angel Gabriel hailed Mary, describing her as "full of grace". The Church understands this as recognition that Mary must always have been free from sin.

There is no doubt that Marian devotion remains strong in the Church but perhaps this particular aspect of Marian devotion, i.e. the belief in the Immaculate Conception, is too complex for the ordinary faithful.

There are those who wrongly assume the Immaculate Conception refers to the conception of Christ. In fact, it refers to the belief that Mary, by special divine favour, was without sin from the moment she was conceived. Most probably the main stumbling block for many Catholics is the lack of knowledge they have about the teachings on original sin.

People today are simply less and less aware of original sin. And without that awareness, the Immaculate Conception makes no sense.

The late Bishop Fulton Sheen put it another way in 1974, speaking about the loss of the sense of sin: "It used to be that the Catholics were the only ones to believe in the Immaculate Conception. Now everyone believes he is the immaculately conceived."

As noted above, Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma in 1854, but theologians had debated and written about it for centuries. From the very beginning of the Christian tradition Mary was held to be a model of holiness for all Christians. The Eastern Christians were the first to officially take the plunge. By the eighth century they were honouring Mary's conception in an annual celebration.

Medieval theologians took up the question, but they had to overcome their own biases and biological notions. For example, St Bernard of Clairvaux argued in the 12th century that the Holy Spirit could not have been involved in anything as base as the conception of a child.

It was a time when many theologians believed that the human soul was infused into the foetus 40 or 80 days after conception. As a result these believed that Mary as a conceived unborn would have been subject to original sin until that moment.

For centuries, theologians hesitated to say that Mary was completely free from original sin because they thought it would contradict a major tenet of the faith, the universality of redemption. In the 13th century, the great Franciscan theologian Duns Scotus found a new way to look at it, saying that Mary's special role did not free her from the need of redemption - it simply required a different form of Christ's mediating grace.

After centuries of discussions and controversies the Church, 150 years ago, decided to pronounce the dogma. In this last Sunday before the celebration of Christmas A Christian Outlook reminds readers of the basic truth of our faith. One hopes that the event will be well commemorated in our dioceses.