Defense On the Immaculate Conception of Mary

by Bro. Mark Louie Castor
Posted in The Splendor of the Church website

One of the most worst attacks of the anti-Catholics was against the Mother of God which is the Blessed Virgin Mary. I would like to expose the exaggerations and wrong exposition of the anti-Catholics towards the Blessed Virgin Mary.

About the Immaculate Conception

This dogma was officially defined by His Holiness Pope Pius IX in his Bull Ineffabilis Deus  dated on December 8, 1854 which says:

 “We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful”.

The anti-Catholics thought the the whole dogma was an invention of the Catholic Church and is unbiblical they even used these verses to oppose the dogma and to invalidate that Mary was not sinless:

 Romans 3:23- which says that all have sinned and that no one was exempted from it.

 Luke 1:46-48- that Mary needed a Savior as she said in the Magnificat, meaning that she was like one of us who is a sinner.

By using these verses they tried hard to debunk the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, their argument dwells only on these arguments, but if we look around at the Bible the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was really in the Bible and Christ gave us a logical explanation concerning it.

In the book of Genesis it says:

         “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

Reading upon the anti-catholic’s interpretation of this verse, they focused more on the two last stanza  rather than on the whole, if we try to look at the whole verse, we can logically noticed, that yes in the end, Christ or the messiah would be the one the crush the serpent’s head, but they forgot the first two lines which says ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman’.  If we try to read the whole verse again and again, it was the Mother and Child who would be a great threat to the serpent, the Mother cooperated with her son. God has already planned that the woman would be a threat to the serpent because the offspring that she will bear would be the one to defeat and crush the serpent’s head. This woman cannot be Eve, since the first Eve listened and obeyed the serpent which made him a slave of the serpent which is sin, it cannot be Israel, since there are a lot of verses saying that Israel became unfaithful and it cannot be the Church since the Church was the bride of the messiah, there is no other person in the Bible which bears the Son of God other than the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Our Lord Jesus Christ gave us a logical explanation why the mother of the messiah cannot be a slave of sin, because a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand, Jesus said:

“How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him.” (Mark 3:23-26)

In other words, if Satan will contradict himself and handed over his servant or slave to his enemy to defeat him, then he cannot stand, he will fall, since he tolerated rebellion in his own kingdom. This woman who will be an enemy to the serpent should and must be different from the first woman in the garden who listened to the serpent and gave herself into sin. If Mary was conceived with original sin, then how can she be an enemy of the devil, how can she be a threat to him and she will not be different from the first woman, since both of them would be serving one master and that is the devil. This verse in the book of Mark is already a logical explanation why Mary was Immaculate. Yes, Mary needed a savior because she cannot be immaculate without God’s intervention, meaning that God had already saved her from sin at the first instant of his conception. Romans 3:23 is not an valid excuse for non-Catholics to force Catholics that the Immaculate Conception is absurd, since it was Christ himself who gave us the explanation. And isn’t it been figured out in the book of Revelation, a sign wherein, the woman will give birth to a child whom the dragon hated. It is written:

 “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth.” (Revelation 12:1-2)

“Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth. She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all nations with an iron rod.” (Revelation 12:4-5)

 “When the dragon saw that it had been thrown down to the earth, it pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.” (Revelation 12:13)

 “The dragon became angry with the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring, those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus.” (Revelation 12:17)

If we notice the verses from Genesis and from the book of Revelation, we can see the repetition and similarity of the two verses, since the book of revelation emphasized the fulfillment of what  was been said by God in book of Genesis to the serpent. If Mary would  be conceived with sin, then the dragon must not be angry with her since she was his servant. It is absurd to think that a person who will crush the head of the serpent which is Christ, the messiah, the Savior would be born from one of the slave of satan and sin, which contradicts God’s promise in Genesis and its prefiguration in the Book of Revelation. Since Christ is the New Adam which is different from the old Adam  therefore the woman who bore her cannot be the same woman as Eve, since Eve became a slave of sin after she listened to the serpent. Meaning both mother and son should be in enmity with the evil one and that is the logic why the Immaculate Conception is Biblical.

 In other words, God cannot contradict himself in using a servant of Satan in order to defeat Satan, that would be contradicting his statement to the devil in the book of Genesis when he put enmity between the serpent and the woman.