In a discussion of the personal sinlessness of Mary, Catholic dogmatic theologian, Joseph Pohle, wrote the following in defense of this belief (again, even if one wants to argue it is not de fide, it is a mortal sin to knowingly reject it):
Thesis II: The Blessed Virgin Mary was by a
special divine privilege actually exempt from personal sin
This thesis embodies an article of faith.
Proof. The Council of Trent declares: “If any one assert
that man, after he is once justified, is able to avoid throughout his lifetime
all, even venial sin, except by a special divine privilege, as the Church holds
in regard to the Blessed Virgin, let him be anathema.”
Hence it is an article of faith that Mary, in
contradistinction to all other human beings, was by a special privilege
preserved from venial as well as mortal sin throughout her lifetime.
It should, however, be noted that this dogma merely
asserts the fact of Mary’s sinlessness, but does not say that it is based on
impeccability.
a) That the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved from sin
may be inferred (1) from the Scriptural and Patristic teaching that she enjoyed
the fulness of grace, and (2) from the fact that her purity surpassed that of
the angels. The argument is strengthened by a consideration of her intimate
union with Christ, the “second Adam,” and her own antithetical relation to the
“first Eve.”
Mary was incapable of committing mortal sin for the
reason that God had put absolute and permanent enmity between her and the
devil, which fact is incompatible with original, and a fortiori with mortal, sin. She could not even commit venial sin;
for though venial sin does not destroy the bond of friendship with God, it
involves a positive moral defect which we can not attribute to the Blessed
Virgin Mary without running counter to the traditional conception of her
absolute sinlessness. If Mary were not absolutely stainless, the Church could
not exhort us to address her in the terms of the Canticle of Canticles: “Thou
art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee.”
b) As regards Tradition, the dogma of the sinlessness of
the Blessed Virgin, unlike that of her Immaculate Conception, did not undergo a
process of clarification, but existed from the beginning in the fully developed
form in which it has come down to us. “We must except the Holy Virgin Mary,”
says St. Augustine, “concerning whom I wish to raise no question, when it
touches the subject of sin, out of honor to the Lord.” In other words, the
Blessed Virgin Mary was without sin because the honor of her Divine Son
demanded it.
This quotation from St. Augustine fairly represents the
belief of Western Christendom. Strange to say, the dogma of the personal
sinlessness of our Lady suffered temporary obscuration in the East, where the
Immaculate Conception was so tenaciously professed. St. Chrysostom holds that
the petition which Mary addressed to her Son at the marriage feast of Cana was
prompted by feminine vanity and her desire to speak to Jesus when He was
preaching to the multitudes, by imperiousness. St. Basil and St. Cyril of
Alexandria interpret the prophecy of Simeon as implying that a doubt in the
Divinity of Jesus would enter the heart of Mary under the Cross. Petavius
boldly censures these opinions as “preposterous.” However, the fact that they
were held by such eminent authorities proves that during the first four
centuries the dogma of the personal sinlessness of our Lady was not so
generally believed in the East as in the West, where SS. Ambrose and Augustine
proclaimed and defended it. The attitude of the Greek Fathers may perhaps be
explained by the fact that they were imbued with the Oriental notion that woman
is inferior to man and subject to certain frailties and defects which are not
strictly speaking faults. In judging their attitude, therefore, it will be well
to distinguish between an accidental popular notion and the tradition of the
faith. The Madgeburg Centuriators were certainly not justified in appealing to
the Fathers in their endeavor to represent Mary as a sinful woman, for St. Andrew
of Crete and St. John of Damascus, and long before either St. Ephrem Syrus,
faithfully voiced the true ecclesiastical belief. (Joseph Pohle, Mariology:
A Dogmatic Treatise on the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God with an Appendix
on the Worship of the Saints, Relics, and Images [St. Louis, Miss.: B.
Herder, 1919), 77-79)
I am just posting this as a former Baptist now Catholic (who has never read a book in his life and relies only on youtube and tiktok videos) thinks Mary's personal sinlessness is not infallible Catholic teaching. It is. It is a mortal sin to knowingly reject it (and no, this is not in relation to the recent Akin the Gish Galloper vs. Wagner debate).
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