Today is, in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation on which one must attend Mass or - at least in the days I was growing up - one would commit a mortal sin. Well, I'm not going to Mass today. For the past forty years, my only attendance at Mass has been for weddings and funerals. (Notice how I automatically capitalized mass. The nuns and priests did a good job of indoctrination, particularly with the Catholic sense of guilt.)
Today has been a holy day of obligation for only 200 years. It was on December 8, 1854, that Pius IX pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary "in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin."
The world does evolve. But, I wonder why it took almost 1900 years to decide that Mary was born without sin, since the church had devoted so much to the 'honor and glory of the Blessed Virgin' - churches, painting, sculptures, names of saints, etc. - for hundreds of years before then.
1 comment:
My old neighbors changed churches because their minister talked about Mary for a full sermon. They felt that it was "too catholic" to give her attention. When the religious right gets rid of "secular" thinking, I predict the fighting amongst themselves will escalate.
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