COULD Mary have sinned?

[OLAM Dad]

This question has popped up a couple of times since I joined the Phorum but I haven't seen a definitive answer. Is there a definitive answer?

I had always just assumed that Mary [i]could[/i] have sinned, but didn't.

On EWTN last week Fr. Corapi very clearly stated that Mary was incapable of sin and that surprised me.

So... what does Holy Mother Church say?

Thanks in advance.

Michael

[Cam42]

Quite Simply put, no. Mary could not have sinned.

It was precisely BECAUSE of her free will that she could not have sinned. Why? Because she chose freely, at the moment of her conception to participate in an "especial way" with God. God made sanctifying grace a characteristic of her person. That is not the case with us.

God does not always operate in the finite. When He acts outside the Natural Law, that is a miracle. And the Immaculate Conception is most certainly that. Go back and read Ineffabilis Deus. It lays out the INFALLIBLE dogma. To hold a position otherwise is to deny the Catholic Church.

From the moment of her conception she participated with God in a different way. She was sinless. She chose to be that way. She vocalized this in the Magnificat. She could not have sinned, because at the moment of her conception, she CHOSE FREELY not to ever sin.

If Mary could sin, then Mary would not be capable of being the Mother of God. Ineffabilis Deus states that very clearly. I have underlined it. In order for Mary to be capable of being the Mother of God, she could not have sinned.


[quote name='Ineffabilis Deus']They affirmed that the same Virgin is, and is deservedly, the first and especial work of God, escaping the fiery arrows the the evil one; that she is beautiful by nature and entirely free from all stain; that at her Immaculate Conception she came into the world all radiant like the dawn. For it was certainly not fitting that this vessel of election should be wounded by the common injuries, since she, differing so much from the others, had only nature in common with them, not sin. In fact, it was quite fitting that, as the Only-Begotten has a Father in heaven, whom the Seraphim extol as thrice holy, so he should have a Mother on earth who would never be without the splendor of holiness.[/quote]

In order to properly understand this, we must look at grace and the relationship Mary had to grace.

Since merely sufficient grace (gratia mere sufficiens) in its very concept contains the idea of a withholding of consent on the part of free will, and is therefore at the very outset destined to inefficiency (gratia inefficax), the question in its last analysis reduces itself to the relation between free will and efficacious grace (gratia efficax), which contains the very idea that by it and with it the free will does precisely that which this grace desires should be done. Mary has effacious grace.

Insofar as that is the case, grace was as much a characteristic of her person as me having blonde hair. Mary could no more sin, as I could not naturally change my hair color.

The formal active essence of original sin was not removed from her soul, as it is removed from others by baptism; it was excluded, it never was in her soul. Simultaneously with the exclusion of sin. The state of original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded.

Her cooperation was from the moment of conception, therefore she could do nothing other than follow what her character was. The person of Mary, in consequence of her origin from Adam, should have been subject to sin, but, being the new Eve who was to be the mother of the new Adam, she was, by the eternal counsel of God and by the merits of Christ, withdrawn from the general law of original sin. Her redemption was the very masterpiece of Christ's redeeming wisdom.