[Peace] [Peace-discuss] Immaculate Conception

[Brussel, Morton K]

I could use stronger terms, but “incredible” seems appropriate. 

—mkb

And why do we get this sermon on this list?

> On Dec 8, 2018, at 9:13 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> [In the Roman Catholic calendar, December 8 is the feast of the Immaculate Conception]
> 
> I suppose for ordinary civilized and liberal people of our time, one of the most repulsive dogmas by which the Catholic Church oppresses her people is the doctrine that innocent babies are somehow born in sin. The doctrine of original sin is thought of as primitive, irrational and deeply pessimistic. Quite a number of Christinas themselves seem to have quietly dropped it, and many of the rest find it embarrassing. Depressing as this must be for traditional Catholics, we can perhaps at least take some comfort from the newly widespread belief in the Immaculate Conception. The Catholic church modestly proposes that just two people, Jesus and his mother, were immaculately conceived: for the modern liberal world, the immaculately conceived runs into millions - indeed, everybody is immaculately conceived. The humbler, more cautious, but perhaps more realistic view of the traditional Catholic is that that thrilling vision is not yet, but is somehow to be realized only after a great transformation in the future. 
> 
> The Immaculate Conception means nothing but the irrelevance of original sin, so let’s take a quick look at that. 
> 
> First of all, original sin does not mean that babes are born sinners; it means that they are born into a human race , a human world already distorted by sin by rejection of God’s friendship - not by their own sin, of course, but the sin of others before them. Through no fault of their own, human babies begin life in an emotionally maladjusted world and are handicapped in coping with the attacks that life will make on them - and, most importantly, lack the power of the Holy Spirit of divine love which is the only way of coping with the pressure of their situation. 
> 
> In all this, Catholics do not differ much from other critics of liberal progressive optimism - Marxists, for example, and Freudians. All three of us think that it is not much use trying to tackle serious human problems piecemeal, as they occur; we need to go back to a root cause in the past. Marxists trace it to our origin in an inhuman and disabling economic order, and Freudians, if I understand them, to our origin in an inhuman and disabling family structure. Catholics have the more cheerful doctrine that it is due to sin, the inhuman and disabling sin of the world. More cheerful because we can and have been liberated from this inhumanity by forgiveness of sin; by the forgiveness that comes to us through the cross of Christ. More cheerful because while Freudians see our disablement as being only ameliorated, and only by long and expensive therapy, and Marxists by long and even more expensive revolution, for traditional Catholics (though they may also be Marxists and/or Freudians, and so may think both their techniques valuable in helping with the remaining left-over effects of original sin) the root cause itself has already been dealt with as a gift and for free. What is required us is that we accept the gift of faith in the Healer and his saving passion and death. Then, although we may (and will) still suffer somewhat from these leftover effects of original sin for a while, in suffering and temptation and struggle in this intermediate life, we are destined to be totally liberated from sin in the future with our victory over death and sin by our sharing in Christ’s resurrection, by our own bodily assumption into heaven.
> 
> And God has given us a pledge of this future in the Mother of Jesus. She is the sign and sacrament of the coming destiny of our virgin mother the church, from whose immaculate womb we were reborn in baptism (as we sing in the Easter Vigil). The mother of Jesus is, in scriptural terms, the sign of what God does in Christ for those he loves, the sign of what it will be to be fully redeemed. In the Mother of Jesus is the promise that when we are assumed bodily into our new life (a life that is to be not only at last a fully human life but also a sharing in the eternal life which is God himself), when this happens, our rebirth, begun in baptism, will come to fulfillment and we shall be indeed as though immaculately conceived - freed from sin as though it has never been. Not that our past life could be cancelled or forgotten, but that our past sinful deeds will come to be seen as God always saw them, through their forgiveness, as ‘felices culpae’ - happy faults as we call the sin of Adam, at the Easter Vigil, as themselves part of the whole mysterious story of grace by which God has brought us forgiven sinners to himself in Christ. It is this future glory of the human race that we celebrate during the season of Advent, when we look to the future coming of the Kingdom, as we thank God, make eucharist to God, for the coming Immaculate Conception and Assumption of our Virgin Mother Church, prefigured and promised in the Virgin Mother Mary.  
> 
> --Herbert McCabe
> 
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