Last week, I posted an article for the Aristophrenium entitled Was Mary Sinless?, which was a critical examination of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Therein I compiled various pieces of biblical and historical evidence showing why Mary could not be regarded as immaculately conceived. Now, I deliberately chose to publish the article on the 26th of August because on the 28th of August, Dr. James White had a debate on this very topic against Christopher Ferrara, Roman Catholic lawyer from the American Catholic Lawyers’ Association. I chose to publish my article two days before the debate so that it can serve as a sort of “pre-emptive strike” that will equip other Christians beforehand so that they would know what arguments to expect. The interesting thing is that Ferrara quite predictably went to Luke 1 and egregiously misinterpreted the verses in it. He also threw up a few arguments that I didn’t address in my article. Of course, Dr. White was more than capable of refuting those arguments, but I think it’d be worth going through a couple of these arguments.

First, Ferrara tried to argue on the basis of John the Baptist’s being sanctified in the womb. Ferrara alleges that since John the Baptist was sanctified in the womb, Mary could have conceivably been sanctified in the womb as well and thus preserved from the stain of original sin. Of course, this argument suffers from two major flaws: First of all, Just because Mary could have been immaculately conceived, does not mean that God actually would do so. If this was the case, then why would God stop at Mary? Think of all the other characters God could have reasonably sanctified in such a way that they would be immaculately conceived. The second problem with this argument is the rather obvious fact that John the Baptist wasn’t even sinless. When John the Baptist is considered “sanctified from the womb,” this simply means that he was set apart for a special purpose. Mary could very well have been “sanctified” in this sense of the term, but the simple fact is that this in no way implies sinlessness.

The other argument that was brought by Ferrara has to do with the interpretation of Genesis 3:15. Mary, as it goes, is the woman whose heel will be bruised by the serpent, and her triumph over this serpent is evidence of her purity and immunity from sin. Of course, this is a very old argument. In fact, it is enshrined within Ineffabilis Deus itself:

The Fathers and writers of the Church, well versed in the heavenly Scriptures, had nothing more at heart than to vie with one another in preaching and teaching in many wonderful ways the Virgin’s supreme sanctity, dignity, and immunity from all stain of sin, and her renowned victory over the most foul enemy of the human race. This they did in the books they wrote to explain the Scriptures, to vindicate the dogmas, and to instruct the faithful. These ecclesiastical writers in quoting the words by which at the beginning of the world God announced his merciful remedies prepared for the regeneration of mankind — words by which he crushed the audacity of the deceitful serpent and wondrously raised up the hope of our race, saying, “I will put enmities between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed” [Genesis 3:15] — taught that by this divine prophecy the merciful Redeemer of mankind, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, was clearly foretold: That his most Blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary, was prophetically indicated; and, at the same time, the very enmity of both against the evil one was significantly expressed. Hence, just as Christ, the Mediator between God and man, assumed human nature, blotted the handwriting of the decree that stood against us, and fastened it triumphantly to the cross, so the most holy Virgin, united with him by a most intimate and indissoluble bond, was, with him and through him, eternally at enmity with the evil serpent, and most completely triumphed over him, and thus crushed his head with her immaculate foot.

First of all, note once again the anachronistic and historically uninformed claim that this is a doctrine that was taught from the early days of the Christian Church. Since this claim has already been debunked to death, refuting it once again won’t do any good. As for the interpretation of Genesis 3:15, it is well worth noting that the Roman Catholic misuse of this passage is based on a mistranslation. If you look at the majority of modern translations of the Bible, you will notice that the pronouns are masculine. For example, the modern Roman Catholic translation known as the New American Bible renders Genesis 3:15 this way:

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.
(Genesis 3:15, NAB)

So where does this mistranslation come from? Well, it can be traced to Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, where the pronouns are rendered in the feminine pronoun “ipsa.” This mistranslation somehow found its way into the 17th century Roman Catholic translation of the Bible known as the Douay-Rheims Version, which renders the verse this way:

I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.
(Genesis 3:15, DRB)

Funny enough, the Douay Rheims attempts to justify this mistranslation in a footnote where it states:

“She shall crush”… Ipsa, the woman; so divers of the fathers read this place, conformably to the Latin: others read it ipsum, viz., the seed. The sense is the same: for it is by her seed, Jesus Christ, that the woman crushes the serpent’s head.

Of course, the Douay Rheims footnote conveniently neglects to tell us who these fathers are who read the pronoun as being feminine. Even if it is indeed the case that some early church fathers read the pronoun as being feminine, this does not change the fact that the original Hebrew pronoun is masculine. Roman Catholic scholars have long since realized the error of this mistranslation, and in the Nova Vulgata, the pronoun has now been corrected to the masculine “ipsum.”

One other thing to note is that I mentioned in my article that Thomas Aquinas did not believe in the Immaculate Conception. At that time, I did not have access to the actual quotations by Aquinas, but sometime afterward, my brother in Christ “Turretin Fan” has provided the actual quotations on his blog. I will not repeat the citation here, but I would like to redirect readers to Turretin Fan’s article on Thomas Aquinas. Suffice to say, Thomas Aquinas did believe that Mary was eventually made sinless by God, but denied that this was her original state, and asserted that she was conceived in original sin.

That being said, it is safe to say that the case against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, stands, and Roman Catholic attempts to justify their declaration of this belief as a dogma is vacuous both from a biblical and a historical perspective. It has been claimed by some that the dogma is not dependent upon the scriptural and historical proofs that have been offered in support of it (since such “proofs” have already been debunked to death). However, given that these arguments are contained in the very article which declared the Immaculate Conception to be a dogma, and have long since been recognized even by Roman Catholic scholars and theologians as being untenable, how can a faithful Roman Catholic continue to hold on to Ineffabilis Deus? The cognitive dissonance is quite telling.

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