Mary's Sinlessness: The Slow Removal of Doubts and Obscurities It is the idea of the weaning from particular non-spiritual attachments, shared with Jesus, and implying virginity, not by privation, but by completeness of attention to the exercize of her spiritual role, as Mother of the faithful, which alone explains the dogmatic status of the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity. We may note that this doctrine is quite unvarying (except for the Helvidian heresy) in the ancient Church and in Catholic and Orthodox Church teaching. The daughter of Zion, the culminating representative of the remnant of Israel, after bringing Jesus up and after his foster brothers had joined his disciples, has none of the work of Martha left. She leads Israel after Jesus in being weaned from earthly attachment-her attachment is to nothing earthly as alongside God, and to his followers only as for him, as to be made like him, and for his sake. And it appears very likely that it is to Mary the mother of Jesus, not Mary Magdalene, that the heretical documents of the second and third centuries most usually ascribe the title "apostle to the apostles."39

There is no sentimentality in Catholic doctrine in regard of Mary (though there may be a sentimentality to be purged from some practice). As a pattern for Christians, her heart is pierced (Luke 2:35), as her weaning from earthly priorities is completed in this kind of consent to the crucifixion. In the Rosary she accompanies her fellow-Christians in contemplating five sorrowful mysteries: Gethsemane, the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the carrying of the Cross, the crucifixion. The weaning of Mary from earthly priorities is well expounded in Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome. 40

An Early Development and Its Later Unfolding: The Sinlessness of Mary and the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception Such is the background against which we must see the doctrine of Mary's freedom from sin. The way of God's working in respect of man is never to impose, but always first to raise up the desire for, and then the consent to, what he does for man, when this is outside human power and is not a human act or not a human act alone. In this way, over a long history, he prepared the Jewish people so that the whole Jewish people so far as it is faithful (the true daughter of Zion) can be conceived of under the image of being the Virgin Mother of the Messiah; and Mary, in expressing her consent, was expressing the consent of the Jewish people and she was acting

39 Stephen J. Shoemaker, "Rethinking the 'Gnostic Mary': Mary of Nazareth and Mary of Magdala in Early Christian Tradition," Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (Winter 2001): 555-95.40 Cf. n. 11 above.

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The Virgin Mary in the Christian Faith: The Development of the Church's Teaching on the Virgin Mary in Modern Perspective

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