Imagine that you woke up this morning to the news that Bishop Robert Barron was becoming an Anglican.
That surprise and shock over the conversion of such a great intellectual was what the people of nineteenth-century England experienced as St. John Henry Newman became Catholic. Newman had been a brilliant mind, working hard within the Anglican Communion, pioneering a foundation for their religious beliefs. Newman turned to the writings of the earliest Christians, the early Church Fathers, in order to discover the true Anglican faith. What he found surprised him so much that he had no choice but to become a Catholic. He lost his job, his friends, and his community along the way. To make matters worse, soon after his conversion, Pope Pius IX declared the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, loathsome to Protestants of all stripes for a couple hundred years. Now Newman was tasked with defending that dogma, along with everything else.
Before we proceed to Newman’s proof for the Immaculate Conception, we have to define original sin and what it means to be immaculately conceived. Adam and Eve were created by God with the same human nature as we were. However, they were given an additional grace by God that raised them up spiritually so that they could participate in God’s supernatural life. This is the lie in the devil’s temptation to Eve. He promised that if they ate the forbidden fruit they would be like God (Gen. 3:5). Adam and Eve were already like God! That extra grace would have been passed on to their children had they obeyed God’s command not to eat the forbidden fruit. However, when they disobeyed, they lost that extra grace, and they lost the ability to pass it on to their children, too.
Not only that, but Adam and Eve were stained because of their disobedience. As a result of that stain, their relationship with God, with each other, and with their own selves suffered. They hid from God (Gen. 3:8-10), they began to blame each other (3:12), they felt shame (2:25, 3:7), and death became a reality (Rom. 5:12).
The Catholic Encyclopedia defines original sin as both “the sin that Adam committed” and “a consequence of this first sin, the hereditary stain with which we are born on account of our origin or descent from Adam.” In other words, you and I are born with this stain on our souls, and we suffer consequences from it, like selfishness, the desire to sin, and death.
In the time since Adam and Eve, however, we find two other people without this stain. They are the New Adam and the New Eve, also known as Jesus and Mary. We know that Jesus is free of all sin because Jesus is God who became man. Obviously, a divine Person cannot sin or be stained by sin when taking on a created human nature. Mary is a human being only, and not God; but when the Catholic Church declared the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, it declared that Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin.
Pope Pius IX declared, pronounced, and defined “that the doctrine (of the Immaculate Conception) which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.”
If it was difficult for Newman’s Anglican countrymen to understand the Catholic Church before this, it was nearly impossible for them to understand the Catholic Church after it. How could the Catholic Church teach that Mary was immaculately conceived?
One of Newman’s close friends from his Anglican days, the Rev. E.B. Pusey, published an attack on Catholic teachings about Mary. Newman couldn’t sit back in silence. Instead, he felt the obligation to defend the Catholic Church’s teachings. So he wrote a public defense, which he published: his Letter to Pusey. He pointed Pusey to the writings of three of the earliest Church Fathers in order to make his point: St. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and St. Irenaeus. Newman’s argument is brilliant, thorough, and convincing.
In the beginning, Adam and Eve were both created sinless by God. Jesus is referred to in the Bible as the New Adam (1 Cor. 15:45), and Mary was referred to as the New Eve by two of the earliest Church Fathers (Justin Martyr and Irenaeus), along with one ancient ecclesiastical writer of great apologetical standing (Tertullian). Newman reasoned that Eve in the Garden of Eden must have been given the grace to resist the temptation of the devil. But rather than saying “no” to the devil’s offer, Eve played an active role by eating the forbidden fruit and offering it to Adam. Adam took it and ate it, and because of that, sin and its consequences entered the world.
Newman reasoned that Mary must have been given a greater grace than Eve because she had been given a greater task. Whereas Eve was given the grace to refuse the temptation of the devil but did not, Mary said “yes” to God’s will as it was revealed by the angel Gabriel. (Luke 1:38). Whereas Eve actively handed Adam the forbidden fruit, Mary actively participated with her son Jesus Christ in redeeming the world.
Newman argued that since Eve was created without the stain of sin, Mary must have been conceived without the stain of sin as well, because Mary was given an even greater grace than Eve. In other words, Mary must have been immaculately conceived.
Powerful as Newman’s reasoning is, the power of his argument nevertheless does not come from his reasoning. For Newman, the power of the argument is that the teaching of Mary as the New Eve flows from the teachings of the earliest Christians. For Newman, Mary’s immaculate conception developed from the teachings of the apostles themselves.
Far from being an invention of the Catholic Church, the Immaculate Conception is rooted in Scripture as it was interpreted by the earliest Christians. This fact helps Catholics to better understand and defend Church teaching. It gives us a reason to believe what the Church is teaching so that we have an informed faith rather than a blind faith.
Faith and reason work together. As we grow in our understanding of the teachings of the Church, our faith deepens as well. Then we can better explain our faith to others—especially to Protestants who struggle to understand Catholic teaching about Mary.