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To: AnAmericanMother

Yes, I do understand where you’re coming from. They talk about the Magisterium on EWTN all the time. My disagreement is with things that I see to be un-Biblical, not just unmentioned.

Like Mary being born sinless. The Bible is replete with the statement that we are all born in sin, every one of us. Or praying to people who have died. People in the Bible don’t talk to dead people, except for necromancers who are condemned for that.

And the Catholic belief that you can only be forgiven by confessing directly to a priest who then forgives you, not by praying to God directly.

I get where you get that from, sort of, when the Bible said “The keys are given to you, whomever you forgive will be forgiven whomever you don’t forgive won’t be forgiven,” yet the Bible is filled with Christians being told to forgive each other, seven times seventy, at least.

I wasn’t insulting anyone, we were simply asked what we were protesting and I answered him, there was no insults in my reply.


27 posted on 06/28/2023 5:19:21 PM PDT by Sir_Ed
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To: Sir_Ed
The Bible is speaking generally, in reference to ordinary folk like you and I (or Paul's readers) - Adam and Eve, after all, were sinless until they fell, so it is not impossible that this should exist in one other unique instance.

More importantly, Christ was fully God and also fully man, except that He did not sin. And how should God be born in a sinful womb? Not, certainly not, through any merit of Mary herself, but solely by God's prevenient grace, she was in anticipatory fashion saved by Christ's sacrifice, so as to provide a fit place for His birth.

The Greek itself shows this in the Angel Gabriel's salutation: "κεχαριτωμένη" - a unique Greek word found nowhere else. The root is the verb χαριτόω - "to grace". The form is a perfect passive participle. My 3 years of classical Greek tell me that this form describes a state that not only exists but *has existed* indefinitely. "Hail, fully and completely graced [by God]." So full of God's grace that there is no room for sin. Which is why St. Jerome in the Vulgate translated it as "gratia plena" - full, absolutely full, of grace. Of course, that changes the verb to a noun, but there's no comparable Latin form.

Also, St Ambrose of Milan, in the 4th century: “Lift me up not from Sarah but from Mary, a virgin not only undefiled, but a virgin whom grace had made inviolate, free of every stain of sin.”

St. Augustine of Hippo, in 401 AD: "Having excepted the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, on account of the honor of the Lord, I wish to have absolutely no question when treating of sins — for how do we know what abundance of grace for the total overcoming of sin was conferred upon her, who merited to conceive and bear him in whom there was no sin?"

Again, unless you examine the Church Fathers you cannot see the logic, reason, and inevitability of the Immaculate Conception.

"Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied.
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast. . .

- thus William Wordsworth (who was an Anglican)

28 posted on 06/28/2023 5:57:03 PM PDT by AnAmericanMother (Ecce Crucem Domini, fugite partes adversae. Vicit Leo de Tribu Iuda, Radix David, Alleluia!)
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