Of Sin and the Human Heart

By St. John Henry Newman. But first a note from Robert Royal: Friends: This is it! The last day of our mid-year fundraising campaign. And I'm optimistic, seeing how generous many of you were yesterday as we near the end. Between elections, synods, and projected Vatican documents, the rest of this year promises to be quite a - shall we say - interesting time. We'll be there, but we can only do that if you help now. Or at need, when you can. Let's finish this off with a bang and get back to the main business of The Catholic Thing. And: Today is not the Feast of the Immaculate Conception - the celebration that Mary was conceived without sin. It's the Feast of her Immaculate Heart, meaning that she remained without sin for her whole life. Both notions have receded for many Catholics in recent decades with the modern assumption that they're merely "pious" holdovers from an immature past. Like yesterday's Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Now for today's column... Which may also be one of the reasons why we don't hear much, even from the pulpit, anymore about sin, let alone purity of heart, difficult as that is for us all. Today's feast may be an old devotion, but it's a real and a crucial one. Just read what the great English saint has to say today. It is so difficult for me to enter into the feelings of a person who understands the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and yet objects to it, that I am diffident about attempting to speak on the subject. I was accused of holding it, in one of the first books I wrote, twenty years ago. On the other hand, this very fact may be an argument against an objector - for why should it not have been difficult to me at that time, if there were a real difficulty in receiving it? Does not the objector consider that Eve was created, or born, without original sin? Why does not this shock him? Would he have been inclined to worship Eve in that first estate of hers? Why, then, Mary? Does he not believe that St. John Baptist had the grace of God - i.e., was regenerated, even before his birth? What do we believe of Mary, but that grace was given her at a still earlier period? All we say is, that grace was given her from the first moment of her existence. We do not say that she did not owe her salvation to the death of her Son. Just the contrary, we say that she, of all mere children of Adam, is in the truest sense the fruit and the purchase of His Passion. He has done for her more than for anyone else. To others He gives grace and regeneration at a point in their earthly existence; to her, from the very beginning. We do not make her nature different from others. Though, as St. Austin says, we do not like to name her in the same breath with mention of sin, yet, certainly she would have been a frail being, like Eve, without the grace of God. A more abundant gift of grace made her what she was from the first. It was not her nature which secured her perseverance, but the excess of grace which hindered Nature acting as Nature ever will act. There is no difference in kind between her and us, though an inconceivable difference of degree. She and we are both simply saved by the grace of Christ. Thus, sincerely speaking, I really do not see what the difficulty is, and should like it set down distinctly in words. I will add that the above statement is no private statement of my own. I never heard of any Catholic who ever had any other view. I never heard of any other put forth by anyone. Next, Was it a primitive doctrine? No one can add to revelation. That was given once for all; but as time goes on, what was given once for all is understood more and more clearly. . . .Now, as to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, it was implied in early times, and never denied. In the Middle Ages it was denied by St. Thomas and by St. Bernard, but they took the phrase in a different sense from that in which the Church now takes it. They understood it with reference to our Lady's mother, and thought it contradicte...