On Reason and Theology (one of my favorite channel on Youtube), host Michael Lofton had Timothy Flanders, Erick Ybarra, William Albrecht, and Craig Truglia on earlier tonight. The topic of the show was, “Timothy Flanders on Eastern Orthodox Reactions to His Conversion”. Timothy, Erick, and William are all Roman Catholics and Craig is Eastern Orthodox.  Craig made a comment on the show with regards to the papacy which clearly shows that he has a misunderstanding of what the Catholic Church teaches (specifically with regards to the papacy and its relation to Ecumenical Councils). Starting at 49:19 in the video, Mr. Truglia begins talking about Vatican I and how the council says the pope does not need the consent of the bishops and he applies it to Nicaea II (and Ecumenical Councils in general) and concludes that there is a contradiction between what Vatican I is claiming and what first millennium Christianity taught.. The discussion is picked back up at around 1:12:20 where this time, my question is placed on the video for Mr. Truglia to answer. I would recommend listening to those segments before reading on. You may also follow the live chat to see the correspondence between Mr. Truglia in the video and myself (Elijah Yasi) on the live chat.

So, is there a contradiction?  Spoiler alert: No, there is not.  Let’s begin.

An Eastern Orthodox apologist who (predictably) doesn’t hold to the Immaculate Conception (IC) dogma. He sent me an article that was issued by lay Catholics in The Catholic Layman from January 18, 1856 which argues against the Immaculate Conception. I would like to address some of the arguments it makes against Our Lady. I would like to address the quotes taken from first millennium Christendom that supposedly teach against the IC.

We will first start off by quoting the official declaration of the dogma by Pope Pius IX in Ineffabilis Deus: “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 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.”

There have been many misconceptions from Eastern Orthodox Christians. They attack our immaculate conception dogma without understanding it. They build up a false version of the dogma and knock down that version. I’m going to clarify what we do and don’t believe about the immaculate conception.

The “don’ts”:

1. The Catholic Church does *not* teach that Mary’s state is exactly that of Eve prior to the fall.

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