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The Immaculate Conception.For non-Catholics, this dogma of the Church may be one of the most misunderstood doctrines there is.Here are some common questions Catholics get, and how to respond to them:Question:Why does Mary have to be holy at the moment of her conception instead of being purified shortly before God chooses her to be his mother?Response:God chooses and elects those who are to cooperate in his plan of redemption from before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4), anticipating his pl …

Is Mary the Mother of God?Let's look at one argument non-Catholics use against this claim, and how to respond.The belief that Mary is the mother of God is not unique to Catholicism. The vast majority of Christians accept this dogma, with only a minority of people in the Protestant community objecting. One text that is appealed to in support of this belief is Luke 1:43. There, Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, exclaims to Mary, who just arrived in her presence, “Why is this grante …

Identifying Infallible Teachings Sometimes people ask, “Is this document infallible?” The question is problematic because the Magisterium doesn’t issue documents whose teaching is infallible from beginning to end. Instead, it issues documents that contain individual propositions that are infallible. In Ineffabilis Deus (1854) and Munificentissimus Deus (1950)—the documents that defined the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary—only a single sentence in each document was infal …