re what was the immaculate conception in article may athos rutgers edu todd nickel laurentian ca writes your roommate is correct the immaculate conception refers to the conception of mary in her mother s womb okay now that we ve defined the immaculate conception doctrine would it be possible for those more knowledgeable in the area to give the biblically or other support for it i ve attempted to come to terms with it previously in an attempt to understand it for learning purposes and haven t been able to grasp the reasoning it was a gift from god i think basically the reasoning was that the tradition in the church held that mary was also without sin as was jesus as the tenets of faith developed particularly with augustine sin was more and more equated with sex and thus mary was assumed to be a virgin for life since she never sinned and since she was the spouse of god etc since we also had this notion of original sin ie that man is born with a predisposition to sin and since mary did not have this predisposition because she did not ever sin she didn t have original sin when science discovered the process of conception the next step was to assume that mary was conceived without original sin the immaculate conception mary at that time appeared to a girl named bernadette at lourdes she refered to herself as the immaculate conception since a nine year old would have no way of knowing about the doctrine the apparition was deemed to be true and it sealed the case for the doctrine rcs hold that all revelation comes from two equally important sources that being sacred scripture and holy tradition in this case mostly tradition joe moore
