# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S23
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Latest Popish Council, Etc.                23

If the soul of the blessed Virgin had never been infected with the stain of original sin, this would diminish the dignity of Christ, according to which he is the universal Savior of all. Although the Roman church does not keep the feast of the conception of the blessed Virgin, she nevertheless tolerates the custom of some churches which do keep that feast. Hence such a feast is not to be wholly rejected. Yet by the fact that the feast of the conception is kept, it is not thereby to be understood that she was holy in her conception; rather, because one does not know at what time she was sanctified, one celebrates, on the day of her conception, the feast of her sanctification rather than of her conception." (Summa theol. P. III. q. 27. Art. 1, 2.)

In like manner Alexander of Hales (d. 1245), P. III. q. 9, and Albertus Magnus (d. 1280), P. III. dist. 3, etc., also express themselves.

The first significant writer of the Roman church to defend the immaculate conception of the holy Virgin was, remarkably enough, the skeptical — and, what is indeed less contradictory in this connection — Pelagianizing scholastic Johannes Duns Scotus, called Doctor subtilis, or better, Quodlibetarius. Even with him, however, the defense was still rather timid. Scotus (d. 1308) writes, among other things, the following: "God could have brought it about that she was never in original sin; he could also have brought it about that she was in sin for only a single moment; he could also have brought it about that she was in sin for a time and was cleansed at the last point of that time. — But which of these three possibilities, which have been shown to be possible, actually occurred, God knows; if it should not conflict with the authority of the Church or the authority of Scripture, then it seems fitting to accept as true whatever ascribes to Mary the greater distinction." (In Sent. lib. III. dist. 3. q. 1. § 9.) Scotus expresses himself still more decisively afterward, namely as follows: "The blessed Virgin, the Mother of God, was never in fact an enemy" (of God? Rom. 5:10) "through an actual sin, nor even through original sin (though she would have been, had she not been kept from it)." (L. c. dist. 18. q. 1. § 13.)

From this time on, then, we see two opposing parties standing against one another in the Roman church down to the most recent times: of these, the one contested the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary and rejected it as an unbiblical and unecclesiastical teaching — called, after its authority, the Thomists, a party in which the order of the Dominicans, or the Preaching Order, oddly enough the very order that later became notorious for taking charge of the Inquisition, led the way; at the head of the other party, which defended the doctrine of the immaculate conception to the utmost, called after its champion the Scotists...