It was while the position of woman as
wife and mother was thus descending into the slough which has been
termed the Dark Age of Woman that the Apotheosis of the Blessed Virgin
was accomplished. The attitude toward human love, generation, the
relation of the earthly mother to the human child because of Eve's sin,
all made the Immaculate Conception a logical necessity. The doctrine of
the virgin birth disposed of sin through the paternal line. But if Mary
was conceived in sin or was not purified from sin, even that of the
first parent, how could she conceive in her body him who was without
sin? The controversy over the Immaculate Conception which began as early
as the seventh century lasted until Pius IX declared it to be an article
of Catholic belief in 1854. Thus not only Christ, but also his mother
became purged of the sin of conception by natural biological processes,
and the same immaculacy and freedom from contamination was accorded to
both. In this way the final step in the differentiation between earthly
motherhood and divine motherhood was completed.
The worship of the virgin by men and women who looked upon the celibate
life as the perfect life, and upon the relationship of earthly
fatherhood and motherhood as contaminating, gave the world an ideal of
woman as "superhuman, immaculate, bowing in frightened awe before the
angel with the lily, standing mute and with downcast eyes before her
Divine Son.
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