We should not think that the dogma of the conception of the Mother of God without original sin (immaculate conception) is a contemporary issue for the Catholics. This dogma has presently been accepted officially, has been proclaimed by the Pope. But the 18th century writer Bergier already says: “According to the Catholics’ (Papists) common belief, Mary is without any sin at all. With the words immaculate conception we have explained that although the Church has not yet formally decided that Mary is not touched by original sin, yet that is a belief founded upon Holy Tradition. According to the general belief of Catholic theologians, the Holy Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, was preserved from original sin when She was conceived in Her mother’s womb. This belief is founded upon the opinions of the Holy Fathers, who merit the greatest respect.”

And which Fathers does the French writer indicate? - only Catholic ones, who belong to the West that had already fallen away from the East. He mentions the Tridentine Council, which had decided at its 5th meeting that all the children of Adam are born with the stain of original sin, but that this determination does not pertain to the Holy Virgin; he mentions the 1439 Council of Basel and the 1457 Council of Avignon, which accepted this teaching as infallible and belonging to the Church. The resolutions of the Council of Basel were accepted by the University of Paris, as a result of which the university’s Department of Theology issued a decree in 1497, whereby no one could earn a doctor’s degree who did not take a prior oath to confess the accepted dogma on the Mother of God. These facts do not in any way confirm the Papists’ teachings for Orthodox Christians, but rather show how the heretical teaching on the Mother of God crept into the Western church, together with many others, more than four centuries before our times.

As confirmation of the new dogma, Bergier in his articles cites two writers who belong to the universal Church - Origen and blessed Augustine, who did not say a word, by the way, on the new dogma. In his 6th discourse on the Evangelist Luke, Origen says that the word “grace-filled” was used only once in the Scriptures and applied only to the one Mary. But that has no bearing on the Papists’ new dogma and is accepted by the entire Church. The grace of God, as has been mentioned and described previously, which had been received by the Ever-virgin, surpasses incomparably, both in quality and in abundance, the grace earned by other holy men and women, and which is possessed by the holy angels. Blessed Augustine says: “We know that She (the Mother of God) received abundant grace to overcome sin in all its forms.” And these words do not confirm the Papists’ dogma! They actually contradict it: only that person needs and can receive the grace-filled power to overcome sin, who has sin living and acting within himself. The Orthodox Church always confessed and confesses that the Holy Spirit descended upon a pure Virgin, made Her ever-pure; the One Who was pure by nature was made pure beyond nature, was filled with grace. An abundant taste of Divine grace alienated the Virgin from all carnal desire, inspired a total and decisive rejection of such desire. Such was the Holy Virgin - a church of God, a spiritual paradise, the Lord’s throne, his Holy of Holies.

A false idea often leads to a chain of other false ideas. The Papists, having accepted the Mother of God as being alien to original sin, also accepted Her as totally devoid of sin, entirely sinless and thus in no need of salvation, nor of a Saviour. Yet the grace-filled Mother of God Herself silences these spiritually blind heretics and fanatics by confessing the God Who was born from Her as being Her Saviour. The Papists, attributing sinlessness to the Mother of God, thereby express their doubt of God’s omnipotence. But the Orthodox Church glorifies the omnipotence and the majesty of God, Who made the One who was conceived and born in sin incomparably higher than the cherubim and incomparably more glorious than the seraphim, who had never known sin and were constant in their holiness.

My soul doth magnify the Lord and My spirit hath rejoiced in God My Saviour, said the grace-filled Virgin in response to Elizabeth, when Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, loudly proclaimed the Virgin to be the Mother of God. With Her words the Holy Mary silences not only the Papists, who take away from God His importance to Her as Her Saviour, but also silences the Protestants, who ascribe Her delight not to God, but to carnal voluptuousness. In contrast to the Papist dogma, the Protestants - sworn enemies of New Testament chastity - assert that the Mother of God - the holiest vessel and the church of God - after bearing the Son of God, violated Her virginity, became a vessel of carnal desire, entered into marital relations with Joseph, had other children. A terrible idea! A sacrilegious idea! An idea simultaneously beastly and demonic! Such an idea could have been born only in the bowels of deepest depravity. It can only be proclaimed by a most desperate adulterer. It can only be accepted and promulgated by those who have so fallen away from the image and likeness of God, that they can comprehend human nature only in its lowly, beastly state.

Luther, who had discarded monasticism and who had taken for his mistress a nun who had discarded monasticism - for Luther’s union with Catherine de Barre cannot be regarded otherwise, - cries out against Christian chastity. Together with Luther all the Protestants cry out against it. They call chastity unnatural, contrary to the will, blessing and command of God, Who, having created the first two people, immediately said to them: Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. One can reply to the Protestants with the words of the Saviour, spoken by Him to the Sadducees: Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. The Protestants, referring to the former words, did not notice that after these words Genesis describes the chastity of the first-created people, a state in which they remained until their fall, not even being aware of their nakedness; that they became aware of this nakedness and felt shame - a sign of incipient desire - only after the fall; that a woman’s pains at childbirth have been decreed as punishment for transgressing the law of God.

The Orthodox Church accepts chastity as being natural to mankind, believing that genuine human nature is that nature with which man was created. The fallen state in which all of mankind currently exists is an unnatural state, abnormal and contrary to nature. However, since all of mankind has been overwhelmed by the fall, this state of universal illness can be called natural to fallen mankind. Thus the characteristics of the illness are natural to the fallen state, but they are unnatural to the original healthy state. In this case - we agree - chastity has become unnatural to mankind. For this reason there were very few virgins among the righteous of the Old Testament: both the patriarchs and the majority of the prophets were subject to the yoke of matrimony.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, having restored fallen human nature, also restored chastity. He Himself, in His humanity, was virginal; His Mother was a grace-filled Most-pure Virgin. Chastity, natural to human nature in its first-created state and unnatural to human nature in its fallen state, has been given back as a gift to the human nature that has been renewed by the Saviour. New Testament chastity is a gift from God, granted by the Lord, as He Himself said of chastity: All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. A gift of righteousness (i.e. a moral state identical to the one in which our Lord Jesus Christ manifested Himself) is given to those who wish for it whole-heartedly, and who ask the Lord for it with most fervent prayers. Chastity is unnatural to fallen mankind, and for this reason it cannot be obtained solely through one’s own efforts: one’s own efforts are only able to tame the flesh, while true chastity is a gift from God and the result of continual, most fervent and often long-term prayer. True chastity does not consist only of physical purity, but primarily consists of the mind’s alienation from voluptuous thoughts and desires.

The mind is unable to reject sin of its own accord, without being supported by Divine power. The struggle of the mind with sin comprises that greatest spiritual labor, during which the struggler sheds numerous bitter tears, lets out a multitude of deep and heavy sighs, asking heaven for help, Only when the heart receives a taste of spiritual delight will it be able to reject the delights of carnal passion, since the heart cannot remain completely without some feeling of delight. “Love is warded off by love, and fire is extinguished by incorporeal fire,” - says St. John of the Ladder. By the grace and mercy of our Saviour, the New Testament Church contains a countless assembly of virginal saints; but they entered the state of chastity only by proving, through a continuous, heavy and lengthy struggle with carnal desires, their sincere wish for purity.

But the Mother of God did not experience a struggle with carnal desires: before desire could ever arise in Her, the Holy Spirit descended upon Her, granted to Her the grace of absolute purity, gave Her spiritual delight to which Her heart became completely attached and from which it was never torn away. The Church calls the Mother of God Christ’s living book, which has been sealed by the Holy Spirit.