4. The Immaculate Conception Refers To The Virgin Birth Of Jesus Christ
Even non-Christians know that Mary, Josephs wife and Jesus mother, was still a virgin when she gave birth to him. This is referred to as the Immaculate Conception, because it occurred without Josephs input.
Its the gospels of Matthew and Luke that mention Marys intact status as a virgin upon her pregnancy with the Son of God and although there are problems aplenty with the whole virgin birth idea, were not here to play party pooper to two millennia of religious doodling in the margins of scripture. No, were just going to point out the fallacy in believing that the term Immaculate Conception relates to Jesus birth. It really sounds like it should but in fact thats a separate doctrine, the doctrine of the Incarnation. The Immaculate Conception is all about the conception of Mary herself. Since the Catholic church venerates the Virgin Mother herself, its officially absolved her of any mortal wickedness by retconning her birth to be divinely orchestrated too. According to the doctrine, God stepped in and saw to it that the idea of original sin couldnt affect or afflict Mary. Essentially, the lady would remain pure: purely because, some time in her future, she was destined to give birth to Jesus himself. The early Christian church, obsessed with sin and immorality as only the sinful and the immoral can be, could not bring themselves to see Jesus having been born of anything imperfect, which meant that Mary, his only non-alien parent, would need to be retroactively rendered holy.
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