About the Immaculate Conception.

O Blessed Virgin, sinless Eve; on this the feast of your Immaculate Conception, we dedicate this page to you that in reading it and exploring its links we may come closer to you and through you come to a closer knowledge, love and service of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen

"We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful."

Ineffabilis Deus.
Pope Pius IX

With those words, Pope Pius IX gave formal recognition to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary as an article of faith to be believed by Catholics world-wide. The history of the veneration of Mary’s Conception is, however, much older than its formal proclamation. There is evidence that the feast was observed in the East in the middle of the eighth century. It does not seem to have become widely observed in the Byzantine Empire before the end of the ninth century when it was celebrated on the 9th of December. Observance of the feast seems to have reached England by the mid-eleventh century, certainly before the Norman Conquest and have been practised in certain Saxon dioceses. Shortly after the Conquest, Eadmer, a disciple of St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, is thought to have written the first treatise on the Immaculate Conception. In spite of an attempt by the Norman conquerors to stamp out the feast it was revived by another Anselm, Abbot of the Monastery at St. Edmund Bury and this brought about a considerable revival in England to devotion to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. Observance of the feast spread across Europe and by the mid-fourteenth century was universal. (Michael Walsh – A Dictionary of Devotions p. 136). The feast was finally given formal recognition on the 8th of December 1854 by Pope Pius IX in his Apostolic Constitution, ""Ineffabilis Deus".

The pontificate of Pius IX, born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was far from tranquil. It coincided with the loss of the Papal States and the end of the Papacy as a temporal power, saw Pius himself have to flee the Vatican in disguise in 1848, and only the presence of a French garrison allowed his return and continued residence in the Vatican. For further details on his life, click here, or here.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that Mary, through the Grace of God, was preserved from all stain of sin, can be something of an obstacle to both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. For a further explanation and answers to some commonly asked questions: click here, or here.

In many people’s eyes, the Immaculate Conception will always be linked with the visions of a French peasant girl, St. Bernadette (Bernarde-Marie) Soubirous, at the grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes in the spring of 1858. Now a place of pilgrimage. It would be during the sixteenth of these, on the 25th of March 1858, that Our Lady would reveal who she was: "Que Soy Era Immaculada Conception", ("I am the Immaculate Conception).

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Wednesday, December 8th 1999.