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I’ve not waded into this until now and I just chose this post to respond to because it was lacking in any acrimony ,.. which I’m not really interested in starting or continuing.

I only wanted to point out that the title is not the full Marian doctrine, as there is more to the latter than just a title.

I see no issues with the title.

It’s other notions that are the issue: immaculate conception in particular.

Consider that a number of guys, Abraham etc, got the promise concerning their seed. This was given with the clear understanding that it would actually be a descendant, and not just only appear to be. Joseph, to those living around his family, only still appeared to be His father. Mary was certainly His mother. But if Mary wasn’t herself truly a daughter of those who had received the promise before her their their link to Him is broken and the promise to them concerning their seed undone.

Immaculate conception merely put off any potential problem from Christ to Mary. If she needed to be special in that way so he could why didn’t her mother likewise? That sort of thing.

It is much simpler to maintain that God has so arranged things that people in general inherit their spiritual natures from their father, a view that is actually fairly easy to support from Adam being said to beget children in his own image to the idea that it is in Adam that all have sin.

There is no physical need for the doctrine of immaculate conception as in any normal pregnancy the placental barrier keeps all blood from the mother out of the baby.

It would seem that “legally” and “spiritually” Adam was responsible for sin: not just for what is said later but we may take note that the woman didn’t see either her or his nakedness before he ate ... in the past I’ve gone on about the text not showing God ever directly telling the Woman about not eating the fruit of tTotKoG&E which means she could have only learned that command later from Him or from Adam ... scripture is silent on which; but, that she didn’t become aware of nakedness till Adam ate may argue that the command was really only given to Adam and that it was later Adam who told her, presuming that she should obey it too.

This seemingly odd observation might help account for how human beings are set up to inherit their natures from their fathers. Thus in His humanity Christ would not have needed Mary to be more than what Scripture plainly says she was and could arguably have great need for her to be a very literal daughter of everyone before her who got the promise concerning Him, their seed and (logically as His mother) the last to receive that very special promise, for without her being their seed then He isn’t either.

So the title remains and it’s sad it seems so problematic.

But that it, the title, appears in a relatively early hymn doesn’t mean that the rest of Marian theology was involved in same song ... for you can have the one without the other.

I need to respond to your gracious and informative post, got behind. I guess I had a naive rather simplistic view of the Immaculate Conception. And I got tired of thinking about and books talking about Mary's most intimate life. It's just supposition but it seems like the details weren't proper to include in the bible. Either Jesus was told at a proper time and he shared with the disciples or Mary confided at some point in somebody. The bible does tell us that Jesus was conceived by doesn't say Holy Spirit but spirit of God and that she was a Virgin. The Jews say they took the wrong definition they used for virgin, alma in OT Hebrew, which means merely a young woman. So when it comes down to that, I revert to basic Tradition without embellishments.

Now your account of sinless is not foreign to me, and I don't remember exactly where I read about it. Essentially it was Jesus had to be born in a sin-free person. Starting with David who committed adultery and was charged by a prophet with the murder of Uriah, it took 14 generations for a pure enough vessel for Jesus. And the generations are traced two different ways (which is common in genealogy). Maybe one of the lines were from Joseph. Naturally people supposed Joseph was the biological father because it was too personal to blab about, and Joseph had difficulty over Mary's pregnancy as it was until the angel told him what to do in the dream.

Then you mention people get their spiritual nature from their fathers. That could be true; I come from a somewhat moral but atheist lineage, so faith has always been more difficult for me. At least I have some.

But occultists believe that the oldest daughter gets a tendency to things like what they used to call "second sight" or psychic abilities. I tried to cleanse myself of all of that through prayer but don't know if I succeeded. I met a woman on youtube, she was an ex-patriate in France, had a very sad and difficult family background, and then didn't see any of her videos (she did simple videos of her excursions around Paris and their summer vacations. Anyway, I went looking for her and saw on another channel she had that she had died. May she rest in peace. I hope her husband stuck around long enough to give her a proper burial; I think she talked about making arrangements for that, too.

Anyway, toward the end, she explained that she was Albanian mixed with something and had this ability to read runes or something and made a little money doing readings which her clients, well they wouldn't have come to her if they didn't expect or get something from it. She further explained that her mother and her grandmother before her had the same ability.

I had my own battle trying to cleanse myself of limited occult experimentation so it almost made my blood run cold to hear her tell of it. It *could* indicate or *might* indicate that we can pick up what the bible calls "familial spirits" from our mothers. My mother was anti-Catholic. That would explain a few things but I do not consider myself anti-Catholic, just have difficulty with some things.

So if it is as you say, I don't have a problem with it. I believed fervently in St. Bernadette's story; I'm not 100% convinced she hadn't heard the term discussed somewhere but no conscious memory of it. But she would have had no idea what it meant.

But to sum up, I think we are close to being on the same page about hereditary purity, or maybe not. I will have to think some more about your explanation of Adam; I figured both were responsible with free will to eat or not, but Eve got blamed for it worse, of course. Anyway, for Noah and Abraham to have been righteous in their generations, there would have been a purity that no others possessed. In fact it could have something to do with their genetic code which didn't have traces of those ancient beings, the Nephilim who saw that "the daughters of men were fair" and "came down and mated with them" and created hybrids or polluted the race.

Thank heaven you seem to literally believe in Adam. Jesus obviously did, too. I do, too, but it is so difficult now with modern science and my dad didn't make me but wanting to please him paying for my education, I took a course in anthropology. We learned about the different hominids, other things that conflicted with my faith. It was a Catholic college. I passed but even the memory of that course makes me feel a little desolate. And I don't have the answers to reconcile it all.

Now I will brazenly say one more thing. I don't think I ever had a problem about Mary's purity. Up the board, there was discussion of Mary saying she needed a Savior. True, God ordained that it be so. Then we read that all have sinned and come short of the law. I don't want to go there; one of the church fathers felt Mary would have sinned at least venially, vainglory about her place in Heaves, but I never saw it that way.

But it hasn't been mentioned that Joseph and Mary made the sin offering after so many days after Jesus' birth. Since I didn't have anyone to ask, I just figured that she wasn't guilty of any sin but followed the Hebrew tradition as an act of humility and because the world wasn't ready to know otherwise and would have had a huge problem if she failed to present herself.

That was an intelligent and thoughtful post, and I fear I didn't do it justice. Thank you for your contribution. It will give me more to think about. I may have gone off the rails about the hybrid people. They would have been destroyed in the flood anyway, but sinful beings always crop up again; but I have to cling to my belief that nothing happens but what God allows it for His purposes.