A Masterpiece on the Immaculate Conception

s it possible for a memorandum to be a masterpiece? A few paragraphs long, dashed off ex tempore, for a friend, not polished? Various columns in TCT have appreciated masterpieces – a poem, a painting, a musical work. But could a memorandum ever be accounted a “masterpiece”?

I have in mind Newman’s “Memorandum on the Immaculate Conception” – written off by the Cardinal,” his editor says, “for Mr. R. I. Wilberforce, formerly Archdeacon Wilberforce, to aid him in meeting the objections urged by some Protestant friends against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.”
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That’s it, “written off” – a memorandum is something written off, dashed off, tossed off.

Surely a master can “dash off” a masterpiece: witness the Gettysburg Address, a Shakespeare sonnet, a Scarlatti sonata. And so we look to Newman’s “Memorandum” without worries as truly a spiritual masterpiece.

Newman begins: “It is so difficult for me to enter into the feelings of a person who understands the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and yet objects to it, that I am diffident about attempting to speak on the subject.” He adds, “I was accused of holding it, in one of the first books I wrote, twenty years ago. On the other hand, this very fact may be an argument against an objector – for why should it not have been difficult to me at that time, if there were a real difficulty in receiving it?”

Already, astonishing brilliance. He imagines someone raising difficulties, and his task would be to understand those difficulties and reply to them. But he can’t see any difficulties. Maybe he’s incompetent even to speak on the subject?

He turns this concern on its head. Many years ago, as a young Anglican minister, long before the pope’s definition, Newman had already come to hold that doctrine, naturally and easily. But he couldn’t have done if it had involved difficulties. So he has the requisite competence, which is to speak to the naturalness of the doctrine!

Who can estimate the holiness and perfection of her, who was chosen to be the Mother of Christ? If to him that hath, more is given, and holiness and divine favour go together (and this we are expressly told). . . .What must have been her gifts, who was chosen to be the only near earthly relative of the Son of God, the only one whom He was bound by nature to revere and look up to; the one appointed to train and educate Him, to instruct Him day by day, as He grew in wisdom and stature? This contemplation runs to a higher subject, did we dare to follow it; for what, think you, was the sanctified state of that human nature, of which God formed His sinless Son; knowing, as we do, that “that which is born of the flesh is flesh,” and that “none can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?”

Then come a series of devastating arguments as to why there are no difficulties in the doctrine. If there is no difficulty in saying that Eve was created without sin – if there is no risk of turning her into a deity – what is the great difficulty in saying that Mary was created without sin? If we hold that John the Baptist was cleansed of original sin in the womb, then why not Mary from an even earlier point in the womb? If there is no difficulty in saying that you and I are cleansed from original sin at some later point in our lives by baptism – if our saying so in no way detracts from the merits of the Lord – then wouldn’t Mary’s being cleansed even earlier in her life make her even more dependent on the Lord?

"We do not say that she did not owe her salvation to the death of her Son. Just the contrary, we say that she, of all mere children of Adam, is in the truest sense the fruit and the purchase of His Passion. He has done for her more than for anyone else. To others He gives grace and regeneration at a point in their earthly existence; to her, from the very beginning."

Newman then considers the antiquity of the doctrine. Why? Because “No one can add to revelation. That was given once for all; – but as time goes on, what was given once for all is understood more and more clearly.” You might wish to copy out these lines as proof of what Newman meant by “development of doctrine.” It did not allow for any new revelation. What it means, rather, is this: “The greatest Fathers and Saints in this sense have been in error, that, since the matter of which they spoke had not been sifted, and the Church had not spoken, they did not in their expressions do justice to their own real meaning.”

He focuses on the contrast between Mary and Eve in the earliest writings of the Fathers, and especially the proto-evangelion: “See the direct bearing of this upon the Immaculate Conception... There was war between the woman and the Serpent. This is most emphatically fulfilled if she had nothing to do with sin – for, so far as any one sins, he has an alliance with the Evil One.”

Newman’s masterpiece concludes: “I say it distinctly – there may be many excuses at the last day, good and bad, for not being Catholics; one I cannot conceive: ‘O Lord, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was so derogatory to Thy grace, so inconsistent with Thy Passion, so at variance with Thy word in Genesis and the Apocalypse, so unlike the teaching of Thy first Saints and Martyrs, as to give me a right to reject it at all risks, and Thy Church for teaching it. It is a doctrine as to which my private judgment is fully justified in opposing the Church’s judgment. And this is my plea for living and dying a Protestant.’”

An “eternal virgin” who had sex with her husband. Tricky, huh?

Just a wee bit more than mere 'trickery'!

The chaste maiden; forever Virgin??

The Roman Catholic Church has turned the beautiful, blessed lady of Scripture into an asexual, frigid Jewish wife; who withheld her favors from Joseph for no rational reason.

1 Corinthians 7:1-40 ESV

... each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.

For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.

Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer;

but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Ya think the above is bad?

Just LOOK at what Salt LAke City has done with the whole idea!!!

Mormons deny the virgin birth of Mary:


The Mormon Church Teaches That:	Our God is an exalted man of flesh and bone He physically lives with His many wives near the star Kolob Worthy Mormon men can also become Gods, like Him Our God is one of many Gods and serves a God of His own! God came down to earth in the flesh and was the physical father of Jesus You should not trust the Bible in this matter. It is wrong. Trust their prophets. Read what the Mormon leaders say about our Savior and the Virgin Mary.

How can Mormons claim they believe in the virgin birth if God had sex with Mary?	They change the definition of the word virgin. Mormons feel that they can still use the phrase "virgin birth" because God was an IMMORTAL being who had sex with Mary, not a mere mortal man. And this is exactly what Bruce McConkie, (top LSD theologian, and one of the Mormon 12 Apostles, died in 1985) said: "For our present purposes, suffice it to say that our Lord was born of a virgin, which is fitting and proper, and also natural, since the Father of the Child was an immortal Being" (The Promised Messiah, pg. 466). In other words, if Joseph had sex with Mary she would not have been a virgin, but since God had sex with Mary, she remains a virgin. By "Virgin birth", Mormons mean that no mortal human had sex with Mary, but since God had sex with Mary, and He is immortal, she remains a virgin!

B. Gods Must Have Wives

If none but gods will be permitted to multiply immortal children, it follows that each God must have one or more wives. God, the Father of our spirits, became the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh. (Orson Pratt, The Seer, page 158)

C. Mary And God Were Married

The fleshly body of Jesus required a Mother as well as a Father. Therefore, the Father and Mother of Jesus, according to the flesh, must have been associated together in the capacity of Husband and Wife; hence the Virgin Mary must have been, for the time being, the lawful wife of God the Father: we use the term lawful Wife, because it would be blasphemous in the highest degree to say that He overshadowed her or begat the Savior unlawfully. (Orson Pratt, The Seer, page 158)

D. Joseph was Her Second Husband

Inasmuch as God was the first husband to her, it may be that He only gave her to be the wife of Joseph while in the mortal state, and that He intended after the resurrection to again take her as one of his own wives to raise up immortal spirits in eternity. (Orson Pratt, The Seer, page 158)
The man Joseph, the husband of Mary, did not, that we know of, have more than one wife, but Mary the wife of Joseph had another husband. (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 11:268)

E. The Bible Is Wrong

Joseph Fielding Smith, 10th Prophet of the Mormon Church: "They tell us the Book of Mormon states that Jesus was begotten of the Holy Ghost. I challenge that statement. The Book of Mormon teaches No Such Thing! Neither does the Bible!" (Doctrines of Salvation, Vol. 1:18)

F. God Is A Man

"Christ was begotten of God. He was NOT born without the aid of man and that man was God!" (Doctrines of Salvation, Vol. 1:18)

G. An Act Of The Flesh

The birth of the Savior was as natural as are the births of our children; it was the result of natural action. He partook of flesh and blood- was begotten of his Father, as we are of our fathers. (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 8:115)
In relation to the way in which I look upon the works of God and his creatures, I will say that I was naturally begotten; so was my father, and also my Savior Jesus Christ. According to the Scriptures, he is the first begotten of his father in the flesh, and there was nothing unnatural about it. (Heber C. Kimball, Journal of discourses, 8:211)

H. Not Of The Holy Ghost

''When the Virgin Mary conceived the Jesus, the Father had begotten him in his own likeness. He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost... (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 1:50-51)
'What a learned idea' Jesus, our elder brother was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the garden of Eden, and who is our Father in heaven." (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 1:50-51)
'Now Remember from this time forth, and forever, hat Jesus Christ was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. will repeat a little anecdote. I was in conversation with a certain learned professor upon this subject when I replied to this idea- "If the son was begotten y the Holy Ghost, it would be very dangerous to baptize and confirm females and give the Holy Ghost o them, lest he should beget children to be palmed off on the Elders by the people, bringing the Elders into great difficulties."...But what do the people in Christendom, with the Bible in their hands, know but this subject? Comparatively Nothing." (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 1:50-51)

I. Bruce R. McConkie, deceased member of the 12 Apostles (d.1985) and leading LDS theologian, writes in Mormon Doctrine:

SON OF GOD: God the Father is a perfected, glorified, holy Man, an immortal Personage. And Christ was born into the world as the literal Son of this Holy Being; he was born in the same personal, real, and literal sense that any mortal son is born to a mortal father. There is nothing figurative about his paternity; he was begotten, conceived and born in the normal and natural course of events, for he is the son of God, and that designation means what it says.—page 742
SON OF MAN: Christ is the Son of Man, meaning that his Father (the eternal God!) is a Holy Man. "In the language of Adam, Man of Holiness" is the name of God. Page 742
SON OF MARY: ...but the Holy ghost is not the Father of Christ and when the Child was born, he was "the Son of the eternal Father. —page 743
ONLY BEGOTTEN SON: These name-titles all signify that our Lord is the only Son of the Father in the flesh. Each of the words is to be understood literally. Only means only, begotten means begotten, and Son means son. Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in He same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers. —page 546

From here ---> http://www.bible.ca/mor-god-had-sex-with-mary.htm

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