But is it accurate to say so? Maybe I misunderstand the dogma, or the baptism, or original sin, but it seems to me that Mary at conception was in the exact same condition a newly baptized Christian is: she is free from original sin. The timing is different, the sacramental water is absent, but the human end product is the same.
Her subsequent fullness of grace (=sinlessness) is due to her perfectly formed free will, not to the Immaculate Conception.
I will appreciate your comments. I think more is made out of the Immacualte Conception than is logically there.
Alex, you bring up a very important concept. The Orthodox Church, as you know, does not teach the "original sin" passed on to generations since Adam and Eve as guilt that has to be removed, but as a consequence of fallen human nature, made susceptible to sin, namely our mortality.
Thus, we Orthodox understand your argument as saying that Mary's susceptibility to sin was removed, as someone's susceptibility to catch a flu is removed by vaccinations. She was therefore made "immune" to sin and therefore could, by this act of God bestowed only to her as far as we know, to resists sin. Which would make her ontologically, as Koloktoronis said, different from the rest of us.
By the same reasoning, Mary, would have been made conceived immortal just as Eve was and her own death would suggest that she was not immaculate. Some Catholics firmly believe that she did not die, although I think the Latin Church remains officially silent on that issue.
The Orthodox, of course, teach that she died, since our mortality cannot be removed by baptism in this lifetime even if we are sinless.
The Orthodox Church, furthermore, teaches that Baptism is adoption into the Body of Christ, the Church. The baptized are sacramentally given a new life (a chance to be saved conditionally), by following Christ in the steps and teachings that are deposited in and uninterruptedly maintained by the living Church.
The Church does not guarantee our salvation. It only states that our chances of being saved are the greater because, relying on our nature alone, it is very unlikely that we will cleave to God, although we don't discount that with God everything is possible.
Someone might observe that the Orthodox recite in the Nicene Creed that baptism is for forgiveness of sins.
Baptism is forgiveness of sins actually committed. Obviously, a newborn infant hasn't (and couldn't have" consciously committed any sins, so this clearly does not apply to them, nor is there any inherited "guilt" in them.
Baptism is rebirth, as the prayer of the Orthodox Baptismal Service indicates by this silent prayer of the priest (obviously for females it is "her" instead of "him")
BTW, the infant, like the adults, is always upright (resurrected) during the actual baptism.
As can be seen, from the Orthodox point of view, the conceptual baptism hypothesized by the Latins in the case of our Most Holy Theotokos does not remove any "original sin."
Clearly, the Augustinian concept of "guilt" expressed in the "original sin" as understood by the West, is the very foundation of the dogma of Immaculate Conception. The Catholic Church, therefore, must make up its mind what the "original sin" entails: it is actual guilt, spot, macula, that is removed by Baptism, or is it a consequence of the original sin of our ancestral parents, expressed as corruptible human nature, prone to and attracted by sin, which, like a disease left unattended, will kill us.
I am afraid that bridging this gap is next to impossible, for it would require the West either to change its entire mindset drowned in Augustinian senseless error of "guilt" by birth.
I had this exact thought at mass yesterday. maybe it is lost in their understanding (non-sacramental) of baptism.