Mary: August 2006 Archives

I want to explore a comment left by RL in the original Papal Infallibility post. Here’s the quote:

”There are at least good arguments that St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Thomas Aquinas rejected the opinion (as it was then) of the Immaculate Conception. In what sense can one claim that the Immaculate Conception was a doctrine of the Church from the beginning if St. Thomas could deny or express doubts about it in the 13th century?

“This gets me to my big intellectual problem with papal infallibility: It seems to require a lot of post-hoc rationalization.”

I think the best way to explore this is to look at the history of the Immaculate Conception as an idea. That may get at the infallibility question and touch on the Immaculate Conception as well.

When I started this post, I really thought I could get the basics down in one long, grand unification post, that brought everything together in one place. Ah, what folly! Notice the roman numeral in the title.

To properly examine this doctrine, I suspect I'll need countless entries. But at a bear minimum, the number four suggests itself. This one, the first, will look at the linguistic issues. The next one will get into Scriptural matters. The third will get into Tradition. The fourth to look at the history. So, here goes nothin'...