From jfgannon@cloud9.net Sat Jan 30 11:23:08 1999
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Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 14:22:47 -0500
From: "J.F. Gannon" <jfgannon@cloud9.net>
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To: classics@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: Immaculate Conception
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E.Moncada wrote:
> 
> We've seen the reluctance of the early Church to allow any suggestion of
> the sexual to taint the BVM in the course of her conceiving and
> delivering Jesus, and that reluctance extended even to Mary's own
> conception (hence, the Immaculate Conception). A late medieval legend
> contended that that Mary was conceived not, Deus avertat, ex coitu but
> ex osculo. After twenty years of marriage, Joachim and Anna were still
> childless. When a high priest refused an offering from Joachim, he
> retreated shamefacedly into solitude. But Gabriel came to both Joachim
> and Anna (who was in Jerusalem) and told them they would have a child.
> Joachim hurried home and met Anna at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem and
> greeted her with a kiss. By that kiss, the immaculate virgin was
> conceived. Eidomen paradoxa sEmeron.  EJM

Interesting story, but I think the Virgin is called Immaculate because
she did share in the otherwise universal inheritance of mankind of the
'original' sin of Adam, which was not sexual but involved disobeying God
(and following his wife's advice?).  Incidentally it was only in the
19th century that the R.C. church officially adopted this belief and
Thomas Aquinas had argued against it in the 13th century.

J.F. Gannon
.