Human beings are born into a sinful condition. This is evident whenever you act in an evil way in spite of your best intentions; envy, greed, and hate may invade your thoughts. Pain, suffering, and death are part of the human experience.
This inherited condition of sin is defined as original sin. The first humans, named Adam and Eve in the Bible, were clothed in God's grace and destined to live forever in eternal happiness. Their personal choice to sin resulted in the state of brokenness we find in ourselves and in the world at large. We are people who are capable of love and goodness, yet also capable of hate and evil.
The church believes that only two people were ever conceived without original sin. One, of course, was Jesus. The other was his mother, Mary. On December 8, the church celebrates the feast of the Immaculate Conception to celebrate Mary's clean and pure beginnings from the time she was first conceived. Tradition identifies Mary's parents as St. Anne and St. Joachim, though there is little information on either.
Tradition also plays an important role in the development of this feast. Whereas other Christians look only to the pages of the Bible to name dogma, Catholics believe that God's revelation did not stop some time in the first century when the last pages of the Bible were written. Rather, God continues to reveal himself and the mystery of salvation through the life of living Christians in all generations. This ongoing interpretation and understanding of God's revelation is called Tradition. Catholics believe that the pope and bishops have received the teaching authority of the apostles to interpret and protect the church's Tradition.
The feast of the Immaculate Conception is a good example of how the lived beliefs of the people led to the declaration of a church dogma. From the earliest centuries, written testimony exists that Mary was free from original sin. In the east, this feast was originally called the "Conception of St. Anne," meaning that Anne had conceived Mary. As the centuries went on, devotion to the belief grew, especially among religious orders like the Franciscans and Carmelites. In the fifteenth century, Pope Sixtus IV allowed the whole church to celebrate the Immaculate Conception, but he did not command it. Finally, in 1854, Pope Pius IX elevated the feast to its highest rank when he declared it a dogma of faith that Mary was conceived without original sin. He wrote:
The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin (Ineffablis Deus).
Interestingly, in the appearances to St. Bernadette of Lourdes, France, in 1858, the Lady eventually identified herself by saying, "I am the Immaculate Conception." Many felt this was Mary giving her approval for the church's recognition of her purity. This belief in the Immaculate Conception of Mary has also roots in the Bible, for the angel Gabriel revealed at the annunciation of Jesus' birth that Mary was "full of grace."