|
2.
The Doctrine Buds into Full Flower
THE
DOCTRINE of her immaculate conception grew as naturally as a flower
does—as inevitably as Mary herself did. The genuine infant who developed
into a girl, a woman, the glorified queen of heaven had certainly not
become another Mary through the process. Nor does the doctrine, having
grown to full flower, differ in essence from the bud out of which it
came. The blossom was from the start incipiently there. Let not
accidental differences confuse the mind.
The Second Vatican Council in recounting her
prerogatives describes Mary as "adorned from the first instant of her
conception with the radiance of an entirely unique holiness." It elicits
the reason why from the common sense of tradition. The all-holy
Incarnation must not be, through the chosen mother, besmirched with sin.
Is it tenable that God, who could prevent such an incongruity, did not?
The conciliar document, Lumen Gentium, finds it "no wonder
therefore that the usage prevailed among the Fathers whereby they called
the mother of God entirely holy and free from all stain of sin."
St. Ephrem, for one, speaks of her unblemished
conception. If he does not affirm her freedom from even original sin,
what else can his phrases mean? Read them: "innocent as Eve before her
fall"—"estranged from every stain of sin"—"ever in body and mind
immaculate." And what about the poem in which he declares Mary and her
Son both "wholly beautiful" and both "without stain"?
St. Peter Chrysologus preached it from his
pulpit that Mary possessed her flawless sanctity "from the beginning of
her existence." St. Maximus of Turin, again from the pulpit, declared her
a worthy receptacle of the divinely conceived Son of God "by virtue of her
original grace."
St. Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople, spoke right out for the
doctrine in his statement that the Incarnate God "made her for himself
without any stain." St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, gathering the
truth of her immaculate conception into one word, pronounced Mary the
superior of all the saints in holiness since none but she was
"pre-purified."
St. John Damascene has a birthday homily to her
honor, which in its fanciful language sneers at the devil for his
inability to penetrate the security of "the most holy daughter of Anne and
Joachim." The malice of hell could not touch the newly conceived who lay
"hidden from the fiery dart of Satan, dwelling in a bridal chamber of the
spirit, preserved without stain." If not the stain of original sin, then
of what? No baby sins personally.
Such testimony from centuries of tradition may
not use the precisely defined terms of the dogma, as afterwards to be
formulated, but the idea was there. It only wanted development. And none
has expressed to sharper effect the implicit belief of those centuries
than the inimitable St. Augustine. In the heat of controversy, let it be
remembered, he interrupted his own argument to stay the onrush of his
fluency and seemingly for the moment to play into the hands of his
opponent.
Pelagius had been insisting on his heresy that
human nature enjoys an innate perfectability from its own unaided
resources. Yes, concedes the Doctor of Grace, there can be a perfect
human creature, a child of Adam not subject to the inherited tendency to
evil. There indeed was one, he quickly acknowledges, yet only one; none
else. "If we could bring together into one place all the other holy men
and women who lived here, and ask them whether they were without sin, what
are we to suppose they would have to reply?" The whole assembly would
have to admit to guilt, "except the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, for
the honor of the Lord, I wish no question to be raised at all when we are
treating of sin."
If St. Augustine's encomium is the more
memorable on account of the circumstances under which it was delivered,
St. Jerome's does not in itself rate inferior. The old Roman Breviary
uses an excerpt of it in two of its lessons for the feast of Immaculate
Conception. "It was fitting," starts off the renowned Biblicist, "that a
fullness of grace should be poured into that Virgin who gave glory to the
heavens, and the Lord to the earth." He gets to the point: "To others
grace comes measure by measure, whereas in Mary grace dwells at once in
all fullness. Truly, she is full of grace." This "fullness of blessing
in Mary," reasons the homilist, "took away entirely whatever curse was put
upon Eve." Then follows the clincher to secure the point: "She was
immaculate, because corruption was not found in her."
Mostly the Fathers who do not directly refer to
the doctrine imply it. None but a few on occasion could bear to associate
any kind of sin with the Mother of God; they put the notion from them with
a shudder. But surely any kind of sin would have to include
original (whether they thought of the term or not) as well as personal
sin. Not knowing what to name it, they had the right idea.
In the Middle Ages the doctrine went through
the second phase of its development: a period of theological debate which
succeeded in refining its meaning, clarifying its significance to other
related articles of faith, and thus fitting it into the harmonious unity
of the whole. Ironically, four of her finest devotees hesitated and in
conscience could not assent to the immaculate conception of the holiest of
women whom God had chosen for his mother. Their hesitancy was due to a
misunderstanding, a lack of perception which Duns Scotus was to supply.
He believed with them—St. Bernard, St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas
Aquinas, St. Bonaventure—that Mary as a member of a fallen race had to be
redeemed by Christ. But he saw through their difficulty which amounted to
this: if Mary had not incurred the guilt of original sin, from what was
she redeemed?
So John Duns Scotus of Oxford went to Paris to
have it out with a conclave of scholars awaiting him at the university
there. Pope Clement V had ordered an open discussion of the subject at
the Sorbonne. He was about to be handsomely obliged. The redoubtable
Franciscan, who back in England had won from his university the title of
Doctor of Mary, came well prepared to meet the objections. He had heard
them all before. He feared none of them. With confidence he stood at the
lectern, taking them each in turn, refuting them one by one.
Then he launched into his thesis. Certainly
Mary had to be redeemed. She was, to our great advantage, a member of our
sinful race. Nevertheless, knowing whose mother she was to be, could not
the Son of God have redeemed this particular child of Adam in advance?
Would anyone in the audience care to think that the Omnipotent could not?
Would anyone present dare to think the Son of God unworthy to have an
unsullied mother from whom to assume his human flesh and blood? Would
this assembly of theologians so demean Eternal Wisdom as to disallow God
the right to outwit Satan and bestow on the creature next to God her
immaculate conception? After all, a preservative redemption is as truly
one as a liberative. It would, if anything, be a sublimer kind. To
preserve Mary from original sin for the noblest of reasons would not
detract from but enhance the dignity of the Redeemer. Not waiting until
she had incurred the guilt, he would simply act in advance to refuse the
devil such an advantage of the unassailable Woman of Genesis.
The argument provoked a vehement response.
There were no objections raised. There were no opponents to raise them.
They had all become applauding admirers who had themselves wanted to
believe in the great prerogative of Mary and now felt, under the
enlightenment of a new insight, a liberated sense of relief. A formidable
obstacle had been removed by the efforts of a sharp mind: and those who
had heretofore scrupled over accepting the doctrine, because they could
not reconcile it with another, now could.
It had to be, for Duns Scotus, his finest
hour. He had delivered his masterpiece in polemics, received for it a
congratulatory embrace from the Pope's personal envoy to the conclave, and
left Paris with a new title. He had become in a day, by popular acclaim,
the Subtle Doctor. He had, as the Hopkins poem has stated so well, "fired
France for Mary without spot." And the ardor, thus enkindled in the
receptive hearts of the Sorbonne, spread like the glory of a lasting
sunrise not only through France but Christendom. It became the era when
of a sudden the village vied with the city in having shrines, from the
elaborate basilica to the simple chapel, named after the Immaculate
Conception.
This popular outburst of devotion to the
doctrine sufficiently proves that it had all along been cherished and now
under a new impetus was acclaimed. The theological misgiving of the few,
which had never disturbed the many, of a sudden did not exist. A
discerning mind, having seen it for the removable obstruction it was,
removed it. Scotus played his wit upon it to the same effect as the sun
melts away an April frost to show forth in all its returning clarity the
vibrant bud.
Devotion to Mary Immaculate, from that day on,
began to express itself in a curious variety of ways. The history of
explorers alone would suffice to indicate the trend. Christopher
Columbus, who sailed in the Santa Maria and sang with his sailors every
evening of their voyage the Salve Regina, stipulated in his will
that his remains be interred in "the Church of the Conception." Fernando
de Soto tried his hand at a last will and testament, too. Nor did he fail
to honor in it the same gracious patroness. He bequeathed a sum of money
to defray the cost and a piece of property on which to erect a chapel to
"Our Lady of the Conception." And it should not be forgotten, for it is
the truth, that the Mississippi flows under an adopted name. The records
are available to show that Pére Marquette called the favorite stream of
his exploration the "River of the Immaculate Conception."
Meanwhile, Pope Sixtus IV universalized the
feast of the Immaculate Conception. He was only doing what the faithful
wanted. But he did it lavishly. He assigned a proper Mass to the feast,
arranged an office of the canonical hours for it, reproved the foolhardy
who criticized it, and further encouraged its observance by the bestowal
of indulgences. "We deem it . . . a duty," reads an abbreviated extract
from his Cum Praecelsa, "to invite by means of indulgences and the
remission of sins all the faithful of Christ to offer thanks and praise to
God . . . for the wondrous Conception of the Immaculate Virgin, and to
celebrate or attend Masses and other divine functions which have been
instituted for this purpose."
The Council of Trent sharpened the meaning of
Mary's unique privilege by its pin-point accuracy of statement on original
sin. From the person of Adam, it decreed, humanity has inherited the
universal curse. But with an alert jump of mind from the rule to the
exception it added: "This same holy Synod declares that it is not its
intention to include in this decree, where there is question of original
sin, the blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God. Rather, the
constitutions of Sixtus of happy memory are to be followed." Had it not
been for a few hot-headed dissenters at that fifth session on June 17,
1546, the doctrine would have been made a dogma under the sanction of Pope
Paul III without delay. But the assembly, knowing how thoroughly the
Church already held and cherished the age-old doctrine could well afford
to let its formal definition await another day.
When that day arrived midway in the nineteenth
century Pope Pius IX in his proclamation de fide reminded the world
that the Fathers of Trent had done everything short of defining the
doctrine, which they left for him to do. He gladly obliged them. Yet
long before him, indeed not long after the Council of Trent, Pope St. Pius
V obviously affirmed the Immaculate Conception when he condemned the
Belgian theologian Baius for insisting that Christ alone of humanity did
not incur original sin, and that the Blessed Virgin did. His immediate
successors in the Chair of Peter reaffirmed the condemnation, forbidding
in their own names a denial of so firmly established a traditional
teaching.
In fact, Pope Alexander VII in an apology for
the feast states the truth with such appealing finesse that the actual
definition of 1854 would borrow its terminology. The continuity of the
developing doctrine, as well as its popularity, lies enshrined in these
papal words of December 8, 1661: "Ancient is the piety of the Christian
faithful toward our Blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary. They believe that
her soul, in the first moment of creation and infusion into her body, was,
by a special grace and privilege of God, and in consideration of the
merits of Jesus Christ her Son, the Redeemer of the human race, preserved
free from the stain of original sin. And it is in this sense that the
faithful cherish and celebrate with solemn rites the feast of her
Conception."
The growth of the dogma into full flower, which
does not and cannot wither, enjoys a curiously remarkable history. Take
this as a perfect example. Wonders beyond the understanding of science,
wrought through the miraculous medal and the waters of the fountain at
Lourdes, are an indisputable fact. Being so obviously a sanction of the
almighty and all-truthful God, they ought to draw attention like a shout
out of heaven to the inference that the Immaculately Conceived who had so
identified herself to Catherine Labouré and Bernadette Soubirous did not
deceive them.
Nor has she, who spoke to the world through
these young visionaries during their life, denied them in death a miracle
from her Divine Son to vindicate their claim on her behalf. They both lie
incorrupt, encased in glass, one in her convent chapel at Nevers, the
other in hers on rue due Bac in Paris, their mortal remains looking none
the worse from the lapse of a full century. In 1933 when Sister
Catherine's body was exhumed from a vault to be transferred to its present
resting place under the side altar, above which the message of the
miraculous medal had shone, the corpse even to its clothing astonished the
witnesses, appearing no different to them than on the day of the funeral
fifty-seven years before. Their testimony hurried the process of the
saint's canonization.
Both seers of Mary Immaculate look to be only
asleep. Their lips which once uttered the angelic salutation are not
uttering it now. There is no need for the utterance. Their mute remains,
in a continuous miracle of preservation, argue unanswerably the truth of
the words which include in their meaning the great dogma, words which St.
Catherine and St. Bernadette used to pray with such ecstatic conviction
and in a voice not unworthy of comparison with that of the angel:
Hail, Mary, full of grace! |