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Your arguement about Mary needing to be sinless sounds like the human mind struggling to understand God; placing limits on God. This same type of reasoning resulting in Arian Heresy.

Arius reasoned that since Jesus was begotten, he must have had a beginning, associating the word (begotten) generation, to be = with creation.

This heresy resulted in the Sola Scriptura Council of Nicene in 325.

The books of the Bible were either written by the apostles or approved of by the apostles.

What is the standard for this belief about Mary? Can it be traced to the apostles?

In 1854, Pope Pius IX declared that Mary was freed from original sin by a special act of grace the moment she was conceived in the womb of Saint Anne. (Ineffabilis Deus)

There are three possibilities:
1) this is an apostolic tradition handed down through the ages
2) Pope Pius IX had a special revelation
3) Pope Pius IX made it up by building on past church actions and statements

Reading his decree in 1854, the answer is most definately number 3.

He ends his decree with ...

Hence, if anyone shall dare--which God forbid!--to think otherwise than as has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith; that he has separated from the unity of the Church; and that, furthermore, by his own action he incurs the penalties established by law if he should are to express in words or writing or by any other outward means the errors he think in his heart.

Simply amazing. The pope decides there was a special act of grace (never mentioned before) and it automatically happens, I mean happened. Pope Pius IX never said the apostles believed in the special act of grace. Pope Pius IX never said he had a special revelation. Pope Pius IX simply stated the church believed this and that, so therefore there was a special act of grace. He made it up! Is God limited by our limited minds? God works in ways we can not comprehend. There is not always a rational explanation.

You might say that since Pope Pius IX is Pope he had the keys and was able to bind and loose. So either Pope Pius IX decided how God was to handle Jesus' birth (over 1800 years before Pope Pius IX was born) or Pope Pius IX changed history by his decree (insert weird SciFi reasoning of cause and effect) or Pope Pius IX is a fallible man.

Simple amazing.

The doctrine that Mary was without sin at conception goes way back, long before the 1800s. The Greek fathers are much more explicit than the Latin fathers. She is by many fathers compared to Eve (prior to the Fall, immaculate and without sin, a tabernacle for the Christ). Pius IX didn't just pull this out of the blue. He made explicit what had been implicit. We already knew that the prophet Jeremiah and John the Baptist were sanctified in the womb. Mary's sanctification had to be greater than that of John the Baptist, for her role as theotokos was greater.

Your arguement about Mary needing to be sinless sounds like the human mind struggling to understand God; placing limits on God. This same type of reasoning resulting in Arian Heresy. "Sounds like" and "same type" are arguments from analogy, one of the weakest sort of arguments there are. Falsehood of the most convincing sort often "sounds like" certain truths; that's the only way the falsehood can be convincing. The only way to refute a claim is to show that it is false. Any true claim or sound argument can be said to "sound like" some false claim or unsound argument. So, "sounds like" proves nothing.

Go read Newman's An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Every Protestant should read that book.

-A8