218. Mary’s sinlessness
218. MARY’S SINLESSNESS
Since St. Thomas did not believe Mary was immaculately conceived without Original Sin, did he believe she was a sinner during her life and committed actual sins, if she had Original Sin? How close did he come to believing what the Church later defined?
Whether by being sanctified in the womb the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved from all actual sin?
Augustine says: In the matter of sin, it is my wish to exclude absolutely all questions concerning the holy Virgin Mary on account of the honor due to Christ. For since she conceived and brought forth Him Who most certainly was guilty of no sin, we know that an abundance of grace was given her that she might be in every way the conqueror of sin. . .
We must therefore confess simply that the Blessed Virgin Mary committed no actual sin, neither mortal nor venial, so that what is written (Song 4:7) is fulfilled: Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee (III,27,4).
Both St. Augustine and St. Thomas extol Mary above every creature.
When Augustine says he will “exclude absolutely all questions” about Mary, he means all doubts about her perfection. She was “in every way the conqueror of sin”, he says. This cannot be said of any other merely human being who ever lived.
St. Thomas’ answer to his original question (his first paragraph) is yes. Mary was sinless. The earliest Fathers of the Church called her the “new Eve”, meaning a new innocence. Mary never committed any sin throughout her life. St. Thomas is very clear on that. And that was not controversial in his day or in Augustine’s.
St. Thomas also believed that Mary was “sanctified in the womb” of her mother. That is in essence the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, though not in the way the Church formulated it (which was Blessed Duns Scotus’ way rather than St. Thomas’ way).
The only controversy in St. Thomas’ mind about Mary’s sinlessness is whether it was because God prevented her from contracting the spiritual disease of Original Sin at the moment of her conception in her mother’s womb, or in some other way, some slightly different. He thought that the explanation of her sinlessness which later was called the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was not certain. But the fact it explained, the fact of Mary’s total sinlessness, the concrete objective reality of Mary as full of grace and unsurpassably beautiful among creatures—this was utterly certain to him.
Theologically stated, the principle is that saints receive dulia, Mary receives hyperdulia, and God alone receives latria. (See #214, above.) Dulia is like a high but finite number; hyperdulia is like the highest number out of a finite number of finite numbers; latria is like infinity.
The practical “payoff” of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception for us is this: the degree of our faith and hope and trust should correspond to the power of grace in the one we pray to. No merely human person deserves more of our trust when we entrust our needs to her in prayer; no one more rewards our hope of receiving divine grace through human intercession; no one deserves more love and awe-filled, joyful wonder; and no one is a more perfect model, than this most beautiful creature ever created, who is Queen of Angels and Queen of Heaven.