Good point, Mark. Being a student of history, ‘chronological snobbery’ makes me want to pull my hair out. There’s a pervasive view that Here and Now is the Perfect End Result of All of History and Time. Or if not perfect, at least on the road (always progressive and/or secular) towards that perfection, just around the corner if all of those silly old rules and customs would fall away. Oh, and we have Science!, a totally new thing.

This is all especially amusing because I’m American. ‘236 years in the US, and 170 years in Europe - do you realize that republican democracy could very well be a passing fad?’

Of course, the Immaculate Conception had been posited in theology for many centuries before the 19th, going back to the early Church.  What happened in 1854 was not the invention of the doctrine, but merely formal confirmation and ratification of what had been celebrated all along.

If the Pope or the Church can not approve female ordination today because it has not been done in the past, how was the Immaculate Conception approved in 1854? This is a serious question because I truly don’t understand. Thanks, Ray

Ray, I think I can answer your question briefly (others may be able to fill in more specifics).

Those are two different sorts of things.

Ordination is a tradition dating back to the Apostles themselves, and has always been understood in particular ways: passed on through laying on of hands, makes the recipient able to celebrate the mass, male-only, etc. Changing any of those characteristics would be a reversal of 2000 years of Tradition.

Declaration of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception was not a reversal of Tradition, it’s a clarification. The Church, both in the East and West had always agreed that there was something special about Mary, making her particularly fit to be the Mother of God. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception clarifies what that particular special thing is.

Important point Bender. The point is that although it took that long for it to be formally defined, it was in the process of development from the beginning. So the dogma did not just spring into being out of nowhere 1800+ years later. Unlike Protestant denominations, Mormons, JWs, and the like.

I hate to nitpick here, but isn’t a red herring basically changing the subject?  What you are discussing are representations of our position that aren’t true: strawmen.

I appreciate the post though.  A reminder about good perspective on time is always appreciated.

I hate to nitpick here, but isn’t a red herring basically changing the subject?

Idiomatically, it can refer to any kind of false proposition, so it really isn’t worth starting a debate over.

@Gary/Scott
A Red Herring is information that leads people off the the trail of the truth.  In rhetoric it is used to lead the opponent away from the argument and to another (often irrelevant) topic.
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A straw man is a rhetorical mechanism where one wins the argument by assigning a different premise to the other party and then proving it wrong.
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I think these fit the definition of the first and not the second.

I think this could have been better written, better argued.

Yes, Irenaeus called the Church at Rome “ancient.” Yes, he thought it was okay to be clarifying doctrine even in his very late (in his own view) era.

But it doesn’t necessarily follow that Irenaeus was correct about this. Perhaps Christ never intended that new conclusions about the truths of the Christian faith would still be in discovery as late as 180 A.D. In that case, how much more crazy would it be for someone to define the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in the 1800’s? So we’d first have to establish that it’s okay to continue making doctrinal pronouncements as late as 180, and then go on show that it’s okay to make doctrinal pronouncements as late as 1800.

It makes more sense to start by arguing that Christ sent the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, because there are certain things the early Christians were not yet ready to understand. That is what He plainly says in Scripture; and, it nicely reflects the gradual increase of understanding of the Israelites throughout the Old Testament.

That the Christian era would reflect the pre-Christian era in doctrinal development is, in itself, intuitive: It is not very likely that, having just confronted the Jews with a Messiah having attributes they didn’t entirely expect, and then throwing hordes of Gentiles unfamiliar with the Jewish traditions into the mix, that the whole would suddenly leap from confusion to total comprehension of all the theological implications of the whole revelation, down to their most minute details! Obviously, time must pass before such a body of human beings could absorb, understand, and draw conclusions upon such a revelation.

Of course, the concern about such a view (that the Holy Spirit would, over time, lead the Church into “all truth”) is that it opens a door for mischief: There is a chance of some wag in 500 A.D., or 1000 A.D., or 1500 A.D., or 2000 A.D., or 2500 A.D., coming up with a boneheaded new heresy (“Jesus was an Extraterrestrial!” “Jesus was a Colony of Nanobots!”) and claiming “the Holy Spirit told me so; this is the next stage of leading the Church into All Truth.”

So here we have what appears to be a dilemma: We know that the Holy Spirit will guide the Church over the ages into greater understanding. But we can anticipate that many voices will pronounce falsehoods under the banner of truth over that period. How shall we Christians, over the thousands of years of the Church age, manage to distinguish between the leading of the Holy Spirit into truth, and false innovations?

The answer was given pretty dispositively by John Henry Newman in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which is very worth reading if one can only get past the style of prose. But for the modern reader, I think I can simplify the critical details below:

1. Human beings reason from what they know to what they don’t yet know. What they currently know are the premises; what they learn from these premises by exhibiting the implications of them are the conclusions drawn.

2. The process of doctrinal development in the Church will not be a matter of new public revelation, but rather a process of exhibiting the implications of that which is already known.

3. Sometimes these implications will be unexpected, but they will always follow logically from the earlier known premises, which are the truths of the Christian faith.

4. Therefore, if one arrives at a conclusion which contradicts an earlier known truth of the Christian faith, this is a sign of incorrect reasoning. The “new truths” will always build upon and clarify the implications of the “old truths,” but will not contradict them.

5. And, in general, there will be a traceable tradition of the “new truths” reaching back (albeit in a more vague and contested form) to the earliest days, so far as we have sufficiently-complete records.

That’s not all of what Newman says, and it’s simplified, and it leaves out the question of how, with certainty, we identify which of the ideas we inherit from our forefathers in the faith are the known “old truths” (and thus usable as premises for drawing further conclusions), and which ones were mere theological speculations that turned out to be incorrect (and thus not reliable for drawing further conclusions).

There is an answer to all that—it lies in recognizing what Jesus had in mind for the apostolic/episcopal offices he created in His new Messianic Kingdom by tying the idea of “binding and loosing” to its three Old Testament forebears: The priestly “binding and loosing” which admitted or rejected a person’s membership in the community of faith, the stewardly “binding and loosing” which had lawgiving authority under the Davidic dynasty, and the rabbinic “binding and loosing” which authoritatively interpreted the divine revelation for the people. Jesus grants to the apostolic officeholders a divine sanction and prophetic character for their decisions: “What you bind on earth shall be [shall have already been] bound in heaven.” On this (and the still-higher guarantee granted to Peter as chief steward, that what he binds no other steward shall loose and what he looses, no other steward shall bind, c.f. Isaiah 22) rests the doctrine of the infallibility of the Magisterium of the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter.

But that is by-the-way. The main thing at issue here is to discern whether the Immaculate Conception is a true doctrinal development, or a late-coming innovation. Were it a late-coming innovation, it would contradict some earlier known truth of the Christian faith, and would likely have no antecedent in Christian tradition, however vague.

But what we see on examination is quite the opposite: The Immaculate Conception contradicts no earlier known truth of the Christian faith, and in fact has antecedents tracing back as far as we have records. These antecedents are vague, and could plausibly have been interpreted in other ways, but as early as one can find evidence, one finds that Mary was special, dedicated to God in some fashion, that the angel’s salutation to her had some great significance, that she was at minimum an extremely righteous and holy person for whom we have no record of any personal sin and a pretty common opinion that she never committed any, and that this somehow, by God’s provision, was part of her character from the earliest moments of her existence, whenever those were.

This was often expressed in the typological significance of Mary as the New Eve and Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant. Always remembering that this typological approach is used throughout the New Testament and affirmed by the author of the book of Hebrews with the admonition that the fulfillment is always MORE glorious than the foreshadowing, we see the early fathers emphasizing the incorruptible materials of the Ark, its untouchable holiness, and so on. The original Eve was unstained by sin from the first moments of her existence until she assented to the temptation by the serpent; the second Eve was unstained by sin from the first moments of her existence until she assented to the will of God and thereby passed the test the first Eve had failed.

That kind of thing is vaguely bubbling around in the earliest traditions, which helps us to have confidence that its later formulation as a dogma constitutes not a rejection of earlier Christian truth, but a clarification of it.

The second red herring is that there’s some sort of cutoff date for the development of doctrine.

## Far from being a “red herring”, the unease behind this objection arises from a concern that Catholicism must not add anything to Divine revelation, under any pretence whatever. If Catholicism is not regulated in what it can teach, it will end up no different in its methods from Mormonism, which explicitly accepts a practice of continuing revelation. To recognise such revelations is one of tasks of the President of their Twelve Apostles; a well-known exercise of this was the revelation in 1890 which forbade plural marriage (thus allowing Utah to enter the Union as a State).

Catholicism has left itself no room for that kind of thing. It is bound by Sacred Tradition, or it used to be. If it can add to Catholicism as it sees fit, without regard to the significance of what it claims to believe, and thus w/o regard to the centrality & all-importance of Christ, it will become Marianity, or Papianity, or Ecclesianity, or some other such thing. It is not at liberty to fabricate its own standards - it is ruled by Divine Revelation, or not all. Whether it wants to be subject to Him or not, it is subject to Christ the Lord, and is circumscribed in its activity by what He says His disciples are to believe. If it does not obey Him, then it is disobedient, & must suffer the consequences of its folly & rebellion. If children need to be disciplined, that is far more the case with the Church. Children are not left to their own wills, but are (or should be) told what they can do, & what they cannot. The Church is no different. Only very bad or very stupid parents leave their children unguided & undisciplined - God is more merciful, & gives the Church a canon, or measuring-rod, to prevent the Church adding to what He has revealed once and for all in Christ. Why does the Church have the canon, if she is not going to be guided by it ?

@manticore
“Far from being a “red herring””
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But it is a red herring.  When and how far down the road the church clarifies doctrine does not directly impact whether Mary’s conception was immaculate or not.  Does it?
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Also I find your argument about canon contradictory. 
“Catholicism must not add anything to Divine revelation”
- Does this mean no new Revelation or does it mean we cannot add any thoughts, clarifications or applicational ideas to Revelation?  Because while I would agree with the first part, we might all as well dig our graves and bury ourselves now if you mean the second part.
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Revelation includes: Adam and Eve committed the original sin; they were driven out of paradise; separated from God and prone to corruption and death.  Mary was full of grace. Christ’s resurrection freed us from death and brought us life in heaven.
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I think what is not a red herring is the Assumption of Mary.
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Simply if Mary was Assumed into heaven, body and soul, without corruption then:
1) She was without sin, for no one can enter heaven without first being cleansed of sin
2) She was without corruption, meaning that she was not dead in heaven.
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So if original sin is what causes us to die and be prone to corruption and Mary was not either of these, then she was not under the power of original sin.
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Therefore beyond “full of grace” it is the Assumption of Mary that provides the evidence of the Immaculate Conception.  In that sense there is no new Revelation in the statement of the Immaculate Conception, it is clarifying how Mary was free from original sin.
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At least that is how I understand it.