Is There No End to This Madness? Anglicans and the Immaculate Conception

Recently the North American Anglican took up the issue (quite ably I might add) of the Immaculate Conception. This implies that there are Anglicans out there who actually believe that the Blessed Mother was in fact immaculately conceived, i.e., conceived without sin.

As the NAA points out, the church’s witness to this is not univocal, certainly not before the bull Ineffabilis Deus in 1854 and really not afterward. Aquinas, who certainly believed that Mary was infused with many graces after her conception, did not support the Immaculate Conception. The question is discussed in the Summa and his answer to it is as follows:

The sanctification of the Blessed Virgin cannot be understood as having taken place before animation, for two reasons. First, because the sanctification of which we are speaking, is nothing but the cleansing from original sin: for sanctification is a “perfect cleansing,” as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. xii). Now sin cannot be taken away except by grace, the subject of which is the rational creature alone. Therefore before the infusion of the rational soul, the Blessed Virgin was not sanctified.

Secondly, because, since the rational creature alone can be the subject of sin; before the infusion of the rational soul, the offspring conceived is not liable to sin. And thus, in whatever manner the Blessed Virgin would have been sanctified before animation, she could never have incurred the stain of original sin: and thus she would not have needed redemption and salvation which is by Christ, of whom it is written (Matthew 1:21): “He shall save His people from their sins.” But this is unfitting, through implying that Christ is not the “Saviour of all men,” as He is called (1 Timothy 4:10). It remains, therefore, that the Blessed Virgin was sanctified after animation.

ST, 3, 27, 2

My logic teacher, who pointed out to me one time that You’re Not as Dumb as You Look, noted that, if Mary was immaculately conceived, such could be extended back to her parents and beyond, all the way back to Adam.

I really think that the desire to go along with this manifests the desire to “keep up with the Joneses,” when, like the Patriarch Nikon and his allies in Moscow, we need to stop and consider just who the Joneses really are.