The Christian Vanguard

 Here is a common argument I hear against Mary's sinlessness that is plainly invalid.  1) If Mary sinned, then she would die 2) Mary died 3) Therefore, Mary sinned The idea here is that mortality is a result of the fall. If Adam and Eve had never sinned, they would have remained immortal, in a sense. And since Mary died, she must have been subject to sin.  The obvious problem with this is that it is invalid. It follows the form of Affirming the Consequent .  1) If A, then B 2) B 3) Therefore, A Is obviously an invalid inference.  But supposing it was valid, each premise requires some justification anyway. Jesus didn't sin, yet He died. And how do we know Mary died? A point against this is that there is no strong devotion to the burial site or relics of Mary, but we do have them for the Apostles. Not definitive points perhaps, but the point remains, the argument is simply invalid. 

We read in Matthew 13:55-56 Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things? Protestants will point to this verse and say that this proves that the Perpetual Virginity of Mary is false. Is that so? It is true that the most natural reading of the Greek word for "brothers" and "sisters" is read to mean blood brothers. As many good Catholics have already pointed out, while the word does encompass the blood brother understanding, it is by no means limited to it. And plenty of early church witnesses testify that they are his cousins. The early church is by no means unanimous, some think they are his blood brothers, others think they are cousins, while some others think they are St. Joseph's children from a previous marriage before he married Mary. But my point is that the early church does provide precedent for the be...

Lewis and Nemirow say that Mary does not learn anything upon her release because there are different senses of knowledge at play. What she does gain is a certain representational or imaginative ability, or a knowledge of how rather than a knowledge that, which can be granted without having to deny that her earlier factual knowledge was incomplete. She may not be able to remember what it red is like, but that is an ability not a fact. Jackson responds by supposing that Mary had a lecture on skepticism, and that upon her release in which she can now take in color, she worries if her experience of the colors is the same kind that others have had. This worry is not about her abilities but whether her knowledge of others was truly complete. So the sense of knowledge, which shows to be problematic, stays the same and relevant.

Another Newman Bible study I wrote. What Does The Bible Say About: Mary Biblical Data: Luke 1:41-48 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” 46 And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; Discussion: Sometimes Protestants will point to v47 to show that Mary was a sinner in need of a savior, which is contrary to Catholic teaching that Mary, from the moment of conceptio...

I just watched one of the videos from the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology for their " The Bible and the Virgin Mary " series. It's good stuff all around, and they presented an argument for Mary's sinlessness and immaculate conception I hadn't heard before, but is really common sense. The argument is from Genesis 3, when God is rebuking Adam, Eve and the Serpent, and God says to the devil,  I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed The seed here is Jesus Christ, who crushes and defeats Satan, and the woman is Jesus' mother, Mary. There can be enmity between Jesus and Satan because Jesus is sinless and perfect. He is not under Satan's domain. And likewise, Mary has enmity towards Satan because she too was not born under his domain. But this means Mary is likewise sinless, and this, as Saint Pope John Paul II said, necessitates her immaculate conception. 

The following is a reply to a text message that I received. My reply is too long and too thorough for it to be in a text message, so here it is on my blog, which I intend to send as a simple link. The issues are Marian virginity, sinlessness, and mediation. 

This argument is put forth by Frank Jackson.  Mary is a scientist confined to a room where everything is black and white. She learns every fact about the physical world, or just about everything there is to know about the physical world and how it works. If physicalism, the view that all that there is entirely physical, is true, then Mary knows everything there is to know, and so she knows everything. There isn't something she doesn't know.  Yet, this does not seem true. If Mary were let out to the world and experience something Red, it would be said that Mary has actually learned something, which is, redness. She knows what it is like to experience redness. So, physicalism is false. This is the knowledge argument against physicalism.  This doesn't seem convincing to me. First, it seems to assume that if physicalism is true, then everything must be expressed as a proposition. Even if physicalism was true, that wouldn't follow. Say Mary didn't know what stra...

I came across an argument against the immaculate conception of Mary. Though, it may not have been exactly that. More precisely, it was argued that the belief in the immaculate conception was inconsistent with the belief that Mary is the woman described in Revelation. In short, the woman described in Revelation has birthing pains. Birthing pain is a consequence of original sin. Mary had no original sin. Hence, either the woman described in Revelation is not Mary, or Mary had original sin. 

Note: I started this post as a non-Catholic. But then I stopped. I converted, and thought it wasn't necessary for me to finish this anymore. I want to review two other books, and I want to finish this review before I move on, for integrity's sake. Ferguson’s next target is the priesthood. This is not a doctrine that especially thrills me, and I suspect there is much equivocation happening on Ferguson’s part, looking at words and what they mean to denote what a thing is over looking at what the function of a thing is first and then putting its title secondary.  Also, Ferguson dismisses the Catholic explanation as “just human reasoning” and so debating the issue is not necessary; the topic is ceded. But I will briefly touch on it and move on.

What is the Rosary? The Rosary is technically not the necklace. The Rosary is a prayer. The necklace is just supposed to aid you in your prayer, since the prayer is so long. Because the Rosary is so long, you risk focusing on where in the prayer you are at, instead of focusing on the Mysteries. So you finger the beads as you pray. Once your fingers come to the end of the necklace or to certain points, you know to change or stop. The basic structure is this: You start off at the bottom with the crucifix, do the sign of the cross and you recite the apostles creed. Then you have a few hail marys. Then there are a few sets of ten beads, for ten hail marys, also known as a decade. There are four decades for the four types of mysteries. During the hail marys, you ponder the mysteries of christ as Mary pondered them as described in Luke 2:19.