# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S25
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Latest Popish Council, Etc.                25

Thomas Aquinas
holds this of you:
you are the purest on earth,
without guilt and sin;
for Adam's child
you were rightly to be freed —
in the daily [sin],
also not the mortal,
no original sin could remain [in you].
Likewise Scotus
the subtle also writes,
that teacher of much learning:
at Basel it has been resolved
that the christian church,
together with the episcopate,
holds this altogether unweariedly.

It is unnecessary to trace further the history of the quarrel between the Dominicans and the Franciscans. Let it only be noted here that even Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) — a saint belonging to this order who was venerated by the Dominicans already in her lifetime — denied the immaculate conception on the ground of divine revelations she claimed to have received, while St. Bridget (d. 1373) declared that she likewise had recognized the correctness of that doctrine through direct revelation. Yet, owing to the disfavor of the Franciscans, even Catherine was not canonized until 1461.

After a truly heathenish, idolatrous veneration of the so-called saints — and quite especially of the blessed Virgin Mary — had made its way into the Roman church, it could, of course, not turn out otherwise than that both the popes and councils, as well as the poor, misled people, became ever more favorably disposed toward the doctrine of the immaculate conception, despite the never-silenced testimony of the Dominicans and of the Thomists generally against it; for it was precisely the former who, more than any other order, promoted the cult of Mary through the custom, introduced by them in honor of Mary, of praying the rosary. *)

As early as the year 1828 the Festum immaculatae conceptionis was introduced in England; in 1343 in Germany, in 1380 in France. When the Dominicans appealed against it to the pope, the latter (Clement VII) decided against them in 1389. The University of Paris made acceptance of this doctrine a condition for the right to teach academically, and bound its members by an oath to this new dogma in 1497; the other universities followed its example. The Council of Basel had already declared itself in favor of the doctrine as early as 1439; Pope Sixtus IV likewise, in 1483, forbade teaching publicly against it, and permitted only the Dominicans to present the opposing doctrine privately among themselves. The Tridentine Council, too, did not leave the matter unmentioned

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*) From a manual of the Jesuits we learn that the rosary consists of 63 "English greetings" [Hail Marys], corresponding to the number of years Mary is supposed to have lived on earth.