Immaculate Conception and the Importance

[Jan III Sobieski]

Why is the Immaculate Conception (sinless Mary) important to Catholics?

[DekuTrash]

Man for a Catholic you sure don't know much about Catholicism.

[43rdFoot]

Because it means Jesus was born without original sin.



I think.

[SigniferOne]

Yes, if Jesus was not born of man, and was mothered by a sinless woman, he wouldn't be tainted by Adam's original sin.

[basics]

" Why is the Immaculate Conception (sinless Mary) important to Catholics?"

Were Mary to have been without sin, her parents must have been without sin and so on and so forth all the way back to Adam and Eve which of course is just not the case. Mary was born of sinners and as such was the same herself. This is borne out when Anna the prophetess told her that she herself would have her heart pierced by her son, which means that she, Mary, would herself be born again as she was at Pentecost with all the others.

Indeed it is written that after the birth of the Lord, Mary had to go through the cleansing time and ritual before she could again enter the Temple. Now this is important to see and understand if you happen to be Roman Catholic. That she was overshadowed by the Holy Ghost was so that her sinful nature could not interfere with her ability to carry God. In other words the overshadowing was more for His benefit than for Mary.

Had Mary been sinless quite apart from the time she carried Jesus, she would not have had to fulfil the requirements of cleansing according to the Laws of God. Furthermore she would not have had to be born again herself to enter heaven. But then we know that she had children by Joseph after the birth of Jesus because there is enough in the Gospel letters to say that she did produce brothers and sisters to Jesus.

And we also know that these offspring in at least two persons became followers of Jesus, accepting that He was indeed their Lord and Saviour. It was silly of Rome to bring this addition into the church because all the evidence from the Scriptures point in the opposite direction. That she had to cleanse herself after the birth shows that she must have bled before the birth when the time was due proving that her bleeding was in line with all other sinning females.

I say that because as part of the curse given to men and women in the female's case she would have to give birth meaning that blood would be shed. This blood was considered sacred by God and to spill it was part and parcel of sin. The blood itself was not sinful but the spilling of it was, that was why an Israelite woman had to be cleansed over a period of time before she could re-enter the Tent or Temple. This Mary had to do.

[Exarch]

the more likely explanation is joseph ejaculating on mary's ahem belly or something; like her thigh
pregnancy can still happen anywayz
either way, i find the whole case of 'immaculate conception' bull .
another probable theory is that the church BS'd
or mary got raped and didnt tell joseph, or was having an affair
i dont have to get all dr house MD here to think this

[gambit]

the more likely explanation is joseph ejaculating on mary's ahem belly or something; like her thigh
pregnancy can still happen anywayz
either way, i find the whole case of 'immaculate conception' bull .
another probable theory is that the church BS'd
or mary got raped and didnt tell joseph, or was having an affair
i dont have to get all dr house MD here to think this

or they just made it all up from scratch. While we can be pretty sure jesus existed, I havent seen anything mentioning joseph or mary.

[Copperknickers II]

If Jesus existed, he probably had parents, my friend.

[gambit]

If Jesus existed, he probably had parents, my friend.

I'm not implying he's some quantum impossibility, I'm saying we know jesus probably existed because there are records of him, in a time when there were many people just like him, yet there was some miraculous virgin birth and no one wrote a thing about it save for the NT guys (who werent biased at all or anything)?

shenanigans.

[basics]

"....yet there was some miraculous virgin birth and no one wrote a thing about it save for the NT guys (who werent biased at all or anything)?"

Gambit,

And what about the prophet Isaiah's input all those centuries before? He told us it would happen long before there was a New Testament. But then so did God from Genesis all the way through to His coming, so when you boil it all down, one can see why the virgin was chosen, especially if God was to be in our terms what He originally wasn't, one of us.

[gambit]

"....yet there was some miraculous virgin birth and no one wrote a thing about it save for the NT guys (who werent biased at all or anything)?"

Gambit,

And what about the prophet Isaiah's input all those centuries before? He told us it would happen long before there was a New Testament. But then so did God from Genesis all the way through to His coming, so when you boil it all down, one can see why the virgin was chosen, especially if God was to be in our terms what He originally wasn't, one of us.

I hardly find generalizations compelling proof, regardless of your personal faith in them.

[basics]

" I hardly find generalizations compelling proof, regardless of your personal faith in them."

Gambit,

Hardly a generalisation since the whole Gospel depends on it being true.

[SigniferOne]

I hardly find generalizations compelling proof, regardless of your personal faith in them.

Could you point the generalization out to me? I think basics' point is fundamentally sound: the coming of a prophet and its details were long before spoken of in the Old Testament.

[Mangalore]

I'm not implying he's some quantum impossibility, I'm saying we know jesus probably existed because there are records of him, in a time when there were many people just like him, yet there was some miraculous virgin birth and no one wrote a thing about it save for the NT guys (who werent biased at all or anything)?

shenanigans.

Caesar was supposedly born by being cut from his mother's womb, Alexander declared he was a son of Zeus... etc etc etc. Miraculous birth was an often used staple to make famous people even more famous.

[basics]

" If Jesus existed, he probably had parents, my friend."

Copperknickers II,

When we read of Isaac's and John's births, these were outside of what was natural and intentionally so as signs to the Jews that God was still amongst some of them at least. As Jesus was already in existence as part of the Godhead in heaven He had no parentage Himself being God, therefore to become man in the flesh all that was needed was a virgin whose body was to be used to carry the infant human.

So the end game was not sexual as we know it, rather the joining of God to the egg of the virgin, and maintained in such a way that her inbuilt sin could not infuse itself to the infant. The point being that He had to be sinless if ever He was going to shed His own blood on behalf of men. In worldly terms because He was in real terms a human at birth and a baby at that, Joseph was assumed to be His father as his wife was His mother.

But in heavenly terms He was still God albeit in infant form in the flesh. So therefore as far as the growing of Jesus was concerned His Father was God yet accepting the world around Him acknowledging Mary and Joseph as His natural parents. To our knowledge Elizabeth and Joseph as well as Mary were the only humans then to know about the virgin birth. But if I have missed something perhaps another can correct me.

I mean the Jews had all this written in their Scriptures yet until Gabriel made the announcement to Mary and Joseph none had an inkling that something they had was about to come into fruition. They well knew of Isaac's miraculous birth, many must have seen the miracle behind Elizabeth delivering John into the world but it seems all the rest were oblivious to the coming Messias.

Strangely it took three men of Chaldea who studied these things to see that from out of the heavens perhaps the hour had come. But of course they were at a distance that their entrance would not be apparent until many many months had passed and Jesus was anything between one and two years of age. Getting back to Christ's lineage we know that Joseph and Mary both had lines going back to David, but Joseph's was broken some centuries before by a curse making Mary's the most authentic.

So Joseph having that broken line and him not being the natural father of Jesus as was assumed by others, perhaps even some of the Gospel writers, whether blind Jews or wise Gentiles it didn't matter, through His mother and Joseph, it was accepted that He was in line to the throne of Israel. This was authenticated by Herod's action and a subsequent interrogation of Jude's grandsons by the Romans.

[SigniferOne]

Alexander told others he was. And what, you believe him? Nobody thought him actually divine, he wasn't defied, or anything. What's with the sloppy facts please. And did you just call Caesarian Section ontologically miraculous?

[Sphere]

I'm not implying he's some quantum impossibility, I'm saying we know jesus probably existed because there are records of him, in a time when there were many people just like him, yet there was some miraculous virgin birth and no one wrote a thing about it save for the NT guys (who werent biased at all or anything)?

You are implying what has been suggested in historical circles, that is with the competing Jewish cults in the first century the idea that Jesus was part god and not just a traditional prophet might have been added to the early church dogma to put Jesus above John the Baptist and other similar apocalyptic cults. This would explain the lack of correlation between the Gospels, which present differencing lineages that trace him back to King David (like traditional Jewish Prophets) but also the story of the virgin birth.

[TheTrainee]

I found an article

[Elfdude]

So the gospel is true or if it (said generalization) is and not if it isn't?

Why would anyone conclude then that the gospel was true?

[basics]

" Why would anyone conclude then that the gospel was true?"

elfdude,

Not anyone, rather them that God has called and are now regenerate. They know the power of the Gospel.