What is the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception? by Mark Miravalle

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a chapter in Dr. Miravalle’s Meet Mary: Getting to Know the Mother of God, available from Sophia Institute Press.

The Immaculate Conception is not the virgin birth. I want to make that abundantly clear at the beginning, since many people get confused on that point. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception does not say that Jesus’ conception was “immaculate” because it didn’t involve sex, which is another common misconception I encounter. (All of us who were conceived in the ordinary way are not thereby “stained.” Sex is not evil, and the Church has never taught as such. Sex is a good thing created by God.) All to say: the conception that was “immaculate” was Mary’s, not Christ’s.

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception says that at the very moment of Mary’s conception, both her soul and her body were created without the stain of Original Sin; they were immaculate. …

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