Topic: Can you help me to explain the sinlessness of Mary?

Source of this posting: Moderator response to emailed question

Date originally posted: March 11, 2002

Moderator who originally posted this source: J. Ruffo

Question:  Many of my Protestant friends disagree with me that Mary was sinless and ask me how Catholics come to believe that.  What answer do I give them?

Answer:

Dear Ann, 

You could tell them that this is a long-held belief of Catholic Christians dating back to the 9th Century at least.  The faithful have honored Our Blessed Mother as being sinless from the first moment of her conception in the womb of her mother, St. Anne, and throughout her life.  This belief was finally declared a dogma, official teaching, of the Church in 1854 by Pope Pius IX.

 It seems fitting to us that Mary who was to become the Mother of Jesus, the Mother of God, be freed from sin from her very beginning.  She was to “house” Jesus within her for 9 months and raise him in his formative years.  Jesus is without sin.  It is logical that his Mother here be without sin as well.   

You could also tell them that this teaching is an article of our faith: one of those mysterious realities that we cannot prove empirically, but assent to as a part of our faith.  What a special honor for Jesus to grant to his Mother!

 Father John