The Crown of Excellence : Chapter 8 : § 1. 63-64

Chapter 8 : The Seventh Star or Splendour in the Crown of Excellence of the Mother of God

Continuing our translation of the 1845 reprint of Fr François Poiré's Triple Crown of the Mother of God (1643 French edition).

Notre Dame des Grâces, Cotignac.(Poggi, 2020)

Mary’s soul was unique in being totally free of any sin

§ 1. The MOTHER OF GOD was exempt from original sin

RESPONSE TO THE FOURTH OBJECTION

 63   Following this teaching, I say that Our Lady was by nature capable of falling into the disgrace of original sin along with everyone else but she was kept safe from this  by the merits of the Saviour. Now, God the Father granted to His Son the election of a Mother who did not appear in His ideas until after He foresaw sin’s arrival and after He resolved to send men a Redeemer. He therefore granted the Virgin, through the merits of His Son, the grace of not having been previously nominated in His designs, meaning to the extent that she would have contracted the associated obligation of partaking like others in the sin of the first man. In a similar way we can say that we enjoy a special grace and a redeeming grace in that we did not live before the coming of the Saviour, for this grace necessarily accompanies the choice made in relation to us for the time in which we now live. That is how the manner of redemption of the MOTHER OF GOD was truly the most noble and magnificent imaginable. This prompted St Jerome to say that: 

Mary had received a grace of redemption causing the Holy Angels to go into ecstasy.

I must add that everyone needs to realize that no creature ever received more graces of Redemption and reconciliation than she did.  Now, it is an established principle in Theology that all the graces granted by God in consideration of the Saviour’s merits are graces of Redemption. This is because they all have as their object the principal purpose of His coming into the world, namely the forgiveness and remission of sins. Accordingly, the very creation of the Virgin will be a grace which has its origin in the merits of Our Lord. This cannot be said of any other person except of her who has the honour of being His daughter by a special title which cannot be communicated to any other – as I will show at  the beginning of the second Treatise.

Consider the following favours and graces of the holy Virgin :

    • her extraordinary birth from a barren mother and a father advanced in years;

    • the grace of her first justification and the sublime graces she received, by means of which she merited to become a worthy MOTHER OF GOD;

    • the contribution she made to the work of men’s Redemption;

    • in short, everything you could possibly say or imagine about every single one of the most exquisite favours she was granted:

All these are so many graces of Redemption and Reparation. Accordingly, we may say that inasmuch as Mary surpasses all others in grace and merit, then by so much does she go before them in Redemption,  by so much is she justly called the Daughter of the Redeemer, and by so much has she been more generously and more magnificently redeemed.

RESPONSE TO THE FIFTH OBJECTION

 64   Finally, they would have us believe that all the ancient Fathers and the best qualified amongst the Scholastic Doctors adhered to the teaching against the immaculate Conception. I would reply firstly that such bold statements could never be proposed without offence to the universal Church which would never have gone so far as to invite the Christian people with such love to celebrate this Feast if she had thought that the Fathers were opposed to it. The Vicars of Jesus Christ would never have silenced the opposing opinion if it had the overwhelming support of the Holy Doctors, whose agreement has always been taken by the Church as the voice of truth itself and as an infallible sign of right belief. Secondly, I am confident that anyone who takes the trouble to study the passages from the Doctors whom they quote will find either that they must be interpreted in one of the senses I gave above or that they have in fact been taken from sources that have been corrupted or altered. To say that men of learning and conscience might have wanted to falsify the texts is something we should not even think about. Thirdly, I can state that far from combatting the doctrine of the immaculate Conception, we see across the centuries that the Holy Fathers have supported it in their writings, in the spoken word and  with reason. Now, even if were to we have no sign other than the Church's ardent support for the doctrine, we would have to confess it would have been passed on from father to son and there would never have been a contrary belief. If this were not so, then the Holy Ghost, who guides their writing, would Himself have been shaken by the contradiction.

 

Fourthly, let us consider the Doctors who for some six hundred years seem to have spoken out more markedly than the others in favour of the opposing opinion. These include Abbot Rupert, St Bernard, Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, St Thomas, St Bonaventure, St Vincent Ferrier and St Bernardine of Siena. As far as they are concerned, I would argue that:

    • either the passages quoted have been subject to corruption; or

    • they must be understood as referring to a conception which precedes the infusion of the soul; this appears in the reason that most of them adduce, namely that what is not yet in being is not capable of being sanctified; or

    • they have proposed this contrary opinion but with doubt and uncertainty, seeing that they have all taught the opposite in other passages; or

    • they eventually changed their mind after mature deliberation and after having a clearer idea of the judgement of the Catholic Church and the Fathers who came before them; or

    • finally, they have been coerced into voicing their contrary opinion. 

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The Vladimirskaya Icon. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.

 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam. 

© Peter Bloor 2024