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Entry: The Addams Family Chapel Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_addams_family_chapel#10987 Post contents: Dear John Ball, The point of the Immaculate Conception, which has been believed almost universally in the Eastern and Western churches alike since apostolic times, is best explained by Pius IX himself and Cardinal Newman, not by humorists like me. But I'll do my best. It has NOTHING to do with DNA, race, the filthy hateful Nazis, eugenics or anything else. The point is that as Jesus had no human father, He received His flesh entire from His mother. St. Paul spoke of Original Sin as transmitted through the blood, from father to son, mother to son. Fathers of the Church, theologians, saints alike--with the exception of Thomas Aquinas--thought that it was not fitting to imagine that Our Lord received His flesh from a tainted source. Surely He alone could have been exempted from the fleshly heritage of sin--which applies to all races equally, so relax, okay? But the Tradition of the Church, passed down from the Apostles (as the Scriptures were, long before the Canon) taught otherwise. You can see it the words of the Eastern liturgy: "It is truly proper to glorify you, who have borne God, the ever-blessed and immaculate and the Mother of our God. More honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim, who, a Virgin, gave birth to God the Word, you, truly the Mother of God, we magnify." Sounds pretty immaculate to me. If both lungs of the Church sing of Mary's purity in such tones, it surely signifies more than just that she was baptized after a life of sin--a dunghill covered in snow, in Luther's charming phrase to describe the redeemed soul of a Christian. Sent at: 2008 08 28