Immaculate Conception: A Model for Humanity

by Brother Donald Boccardi, S.M., S.T.D.

he feast of the Immaculate Conception focuses much confusion among Protestants as well as among some Catholics. Many think it refers to the conception of Jesus at the Annunciation, when, in fact, it refers to Mary's conception in the womb of her mother.

In 1854 Pope Pius IX declared that Mary was preserved from original sin, by virtue of a special grace of God and in view of her being the mother of Christ. Some worried that it meant that Mary had no need of redemption, but as one theologian explained it, you can be saved from a pit by being pulled out of it or by having someone keep you from falling into it; the latter is the case with Mary.

The concept of the Immaculate Conception has had a stormy past. Some of the great saints of the Middle Ages did not accept it. At the time of the Reformation, the debate on the idea among theologians had become so out-of-hand that the pope put all writings on the subject on the Index of Forbidden Books. A further irony is found in the openness which Martin Luther had to this idea around the same time.

Nevertheless, the feast was being celebrated in the liturgy and, after the appearances claimed by Catherine Laboure and Bernadette, devotion among the faithful proliferated in the 19th century, the former in 1830 before the dogmatic proclamation and the latter afterwards in 1858.

At a time when Marx was proclaiming his economic theory defining man, when Nietzsche was expounding on the idea of superman, and when the industrial revolution was trivializing the importance of the individual, the church presented a feminine model of what it means to be human, that is, a belief that there is more to life than the material world and that we are each unique beings in the sight of God.

It is important to keep the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and Assumption within sight of each other. They really proclaim to us anew that Mary is model for all the faithful disciples of Jesus who are born in grace and who are destined for resurrection and eternal life. We need this kind of symbolic theology to translate the more abstract aspects of its meaning into our lives.

As important things in life easily fade into the background by more pressing needs, seeing the Immaculate Conception within the concept of the Biblical Mary and her relationship to Christ and to the church can help us to see ourselves more clearly as faithful disciples of Jesus.

Brother Donald Boccardi, S.M., S.T.D., serves on the faculty of Theological College at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

To the Top of this page
Return to the Commentaries main page
The Catholic University of America home page

Any questions or comments? cua-public-affairs@cua.edu

Revised: 11 November 1997

All contents copyright © 1997.
The Catholic University of America,
Office of Public Affairs.