Immaculate Conceptions

Immaculate Conceptions investigates the religious imagination - sacred truth communicated through contingent and contextually determined theological propositions - as deployed in early modern Spanish textual and visual representations of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception.

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This monumental effort is based on the writings of Aquinas, Bonaventure and Scotus. Thomas, merely gave his real doctrine and opinion concerning the Immaculate Conception. However, now a favorable opportunity was offered to contribute in loving gratitude to the greater honor and glory of Mary Immaculate and of her glorious defender, D. Scotus, by presenting his doctrine concerning Mary's Immaculate Conception. Now of the three greatest scholastic Doctors, to include Bonaventure, Scotus alone gives Mary the full glory of a real and complete Immaculate Conception. In comparing the three Doctors, those portions of their works will chiefly be used which "ex professo" state and explain their position and opinion regarding this doctrine and other doctrines closely connected with it, for instance, original justice, original sin, conception, sanctification, redemption. This is indeed a pinnacle treatise regarding this issue.

This second volume of the series Mariological Studies in Honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe treats the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, hidden in plain sight for nearly a thousand years prior to Bl. John Duns Scotus and his later influence at the Council of Florence. Until now, practically nothing was known of this history. Key to the present study is St. Gregory Nazianzen, whose Marian doctrine inspired Benedict XVI at a 2007 public audience: "Mary, who gave human nature to Christ, is true Mother of God and, in view of her highest mission, was 'prepurified,' as if a distant prelude of the Immaculate Conception." Fr. Kappes' groundbreaking thesis confirms Benedict's insight beyond anything previously imaginable. The person and mystery of Mary in Christ and the Church unfolds as indispensable for ecumenical theology. Greco-Latin agreement on the Immaculate Conception at Florence was itself a portent to subsequent harmony on other doctrinal questions, then, as now. As Pope Francis intensifies efforts to resolve differences between Orthodox and Catholics, Fr. Kappes' research clarifies Our Lady's central role in these efforts.

Drawing on scholastic defence of the Immaculate Conception and on liturgies in medieval Iberia, this book examines how poets took apocryphal stories and biblical figures, like Eve confronting the serpent, to express how Mary was preserved from original sin.

In The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception: History and Significance (University of Notre Dame Press, 1958; reissued 2016), thirteen European and American theologians treat the historical development and theological significance of a major Roman Catholic doctrine. Edward Dennis O'Connor, C.S.C., a specialist in mediaeval theology, notes in his preface that the subject of the Virgin Mary's Immaculate Conception was first discussed about the year 1100. The doctrine was defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854 after about seventy-five years of "what was perhaps the most prolonged and passionate debate that has ever been carried on in Catholic theology." The importance of any doctrine, however, "does not lie chiefly in its history, but in its intrinsic significance as truth, and in its rank in the hierarchy of truth, which do not depend on historical contingencies." From this point of view, the Immaculate Conception is of immense importance not only for Mariology but also for the theology of the Redemption and of the Church. The essays in The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception are broad-ranging studies both of the history of doctrinal development and the major aspects of the doctrine. It includes chapters ranging from "Scripture and the Immaculate Conception" to "The Immaculate Conception in Art," over fifty illustrations, and an exhaustive bibliography of the European literature on the doctrine published from 1830 to 1957. Contributors include: Monsignor Charles Journet, Monsignor Georges Jouassard, Francis Dvornik, Cornelius A. Bouman, Carlo Bal�c, O.F.M., Wenceslaus Sebastian, O.F.M., Ren� Laurentin, Marie-Joseph Nicolas, O.P., Urban Mullaney, O.P., Charles DeKoninck, George Anawati, O.P., Maurice Vloberg, and Edward O'Connor, C.S.C. Edward Dennis O'Connor, C.S.C., is associate professor emeritus of theology at the University of Notre Dame. He was involved in the charismatic movement and has authored several works about it, including The Pentecostal Movement in the Catholic Church and Marian Apparitions Today: Why So Many'.