Are We All Immaculately Conceived?

Today, December 8, is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. This Catholic feast day, a Holy Day of Obligation since Pope Pius IX declared it so in 1854, commemorates the Blessed Virgin Mary’s being conceived without the stain of Original Sin present in every other human being since the Fall of Adam. It does not, as many persons both within and outside the Church believe, celebrate Christ’s conception by the Holy Spirit.

This feast is a fascinating one, a fact which is brought home forcefully to those of us at the only true Dominican institution of higher learning in this country. A veritable all-star lineup of Dominican theologians and saints, including Thomas Aquinas himself, were staunchly opposed to the doctrine—a fact which the Dominican homilists did not let their congregations forget today. It was the Franciscans (minus the great St. Bonaventura) whose theology prevailed in this question, and while the other mendicant friars have not forgotten this, they are gracious in acknowledging the error of their predecessors.

It is not only the history of the feast’s commemoration that is fascinating, however. At the very core of this long-standing doctrine is the Catholic belief in Original Sin. The great G.K. Chesterton was once (well, was always) in an argument with the very able playwright George Bernard Shaw, and Chesterton asked this confirmed old agnostic whether he believed in Original Sin.

“Of course not,” said Bernard Shaw. “That’s just a fiction invented by the Catholic Church to keep itself in business.”

“Well,” asked the portly polemicist, “do you believe in the Immaculate Conception?”

“Of course not,” repeated the dramatist. “That’s just an old superstition.”

“I’m afraid,” replied GKC, “Mr. Shaw, that you must choose one or the other. If there is no original sin, then we are all immaculately conceived. Surely you are not less moderate than the Church, which holds that only one person was ever born without sin?”

Chesterton’s question is one with which we all must grapple. Surely we don’t believe that humanity was conceived without at least some propensity to sin? And yet, today Original Sin is widely regarded as exactly the sort of old wives’ tale Bernard Shaw believed it to be. It seems that in eliminating the idea of sin from the public consciousness, we have merely excised all guilt (that stereotypically Catholic emotion). Chesterton is quite good on this point in his writings, pointing out that denying the preponderance of sin is denying objective reality, and that a healthy sense of guilt and shame for bad actions is vital to a just and moral society (and Molly O’Donnell goes “erghh!”).

A dispute on this exact matter, in fact, led a woman sitting in front of two authors of this forum at the Independence Day fireworks this summer to wheel about and yell “Do you realize you haven’t shut up this entire time!?” She was right; but her question went unasked until I uttered the word “sin”. We live in a society that wants to act badly and be congratulated for it. Surely these folks are not less moderate than the Church, which is willing to meet sinners halfway—in the Sacrament of Reconcilation?