Before we proceed to Newman’s proof for the Immaculate Conception

we have to define original sin and what it means to be immaculately conceived. Adam and Eve were created by God with the same human nature as we were. However, they were given an additional grace by God that raised them up spiritually so that they could participate in God’s supernatural life. This is the lie in the devil’s temptation to Eve. He promised that if they ate the forbidden fruit they would be like God (Gen. 3:5). Adam and Eve were already like God! That extra grace would have been passed on to their children had they obeyed God’s command not to eat the forbidden fruit. However, when they disobeyed, they lost that extra grace, and they lost the ability to pass it on to their children, too.

Not only that, but Adam and Eve were stained because of their disobedience. As a result of that stain, their relationship with God, with each other, and with their own selves suffered. They hid from God (Gen. 3:8-10), they began to blame each other (3:12), they felt shame (2:25, 3:7), and death became a reality (Rom. 5:12).

The Catholic Encyclopedia defines original sin as both “the sin that Adam committed” and “a consequence of this first sin, the hereditary stain with which we are born on account of our origin or descent from Adam.” In other words, you and I are born with this stain on our souls, and we suffer consequences from it, like selfishness, the desire to sin, and death.

However, since Adam and Eve, there are two other people who have been created without this stain. They are the New Adam and the New Eve, also known as Jesus and Mary. We know that Jesus is free of all sin because Jesus is God who became man. Obviously, God cannot sin or be stained by sin. However, Mary is one of us, a human being only, and not God. When the Catholic Church declared the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, it declared that Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin.

Pope Pius IX declared, pronounced, and defined “that the doctrine (of the Immaculate Conception) which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior 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.”

If it was difficult for Newman’s Anglican countrymen to understand the Catholic Church before this, it was nearly impossible for them to understand the Catholic Church after it. How could the Catholic Church teach that Mary was immaculately conceived?

One of Newman’s close friends from his Anglican days, the Rev. E.B. Pusey, published an attack on Catholic teachings about Mary. Newman couldn’t sit back in silence. Instead, he felt the obligation to defend the Catholic Church’s teachings. So he wrote a public defense, which he published: his Letter to Pusey. He pointed Pusey to the writings of three of the earliest Church Fathers in order to make his point: St. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and St. Irenaeus. Newman’s argument is brilliant, thorough, and convincing.