Herbert F. Smith, SJ writes in his book, Pro Choice, Pro Life that “[T]he human soul is spiritual and therefore comes directly from God by an action of creation. But when? At conception? God has not revealed the moment.” (p. 37). My answer to Father Smith’s comment is: “Mary has!” Unfortunately, unlike the words of scripture, the Church has never reflected on the words Mary has spoken through time to see if they contain a deeper value than initially thought.

To understand the words of scripture, theologians use a process that involves a “constant rereading” through which the “word gradually unfolds its inner potentialities, already somehow present like seeds, but needing the challenge of new situations, new experiences and new sufferings to open up.” Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Foreword xviii-xix (2007). Indeed, Pope John Paul II’s reflection upon Jesus’ intent in using the words “from the beginning” in Matthew 19 gave rise to the Theology of the Body.

If the Church treated Mary’s words like the words in scripture and engaged in a “rereading” of Mary’s words regarding her conception, the Church may arrive at a definitive answer as to when ensoulment occurs.

My own “rereading” of Mary’s words began in the Great Jubilee year 2000. In October, I visited the Chapel of the Rue de Bac in Paris where Mary entrusted St. Catherine with the making of the Miraculous Medal. The words “Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee” are painted in large letters on the arch above the altar. While I had been wearing the Medal for twenty years by then, I never once thought about why Mary selected those specific words for the Medal. Sitting in the Chapel, I immediately thought “that is the oddest combination of words to want on a medal. Why would you want that? Why do you want to be known as ‘conceived without sin’? Why not ‘Queen of Peace’ or ‘Mother of all’ or ‘full of grace’?”

Shortly after returning from Paris, I was sitting in on a class at St. Charles Seminary in Philadelphia and the young priest related that the Church had never defined the timing of ensoulment, and that for all we knew, a baby could receive his soul weeks after conception. My experience at the Chapel at the Rue de Bac came back to me. I wondered in using three simple words, Mary was declaring a truth that applied to herself and the rest of humanity, i.e., that Mary, and all members of the human race, received their souls at conception, with the distinction being that Mary’s soul was immaculate, while the soul of everyone else bore the stain of original sin?

Since 2000 when I visited the Chapel at the Rue de Bac, I have come across other instances in which Mary appeared and spoke about her conception. There may be others, but these are the ones that came up in the normal course of my life:

(1) In the 1300s Mary told St. Bridget of Sweden that she was “conceived without original sin, and not in sin” Revelations of St. Bridget 14 (Tan 1984). (2) On December 9, 1531, when Mary appeared to Juan Diego on December 9, 1531, some scholars believe she identified herself as the Immaculate Conception, and that a fundamental error in translation of Juan Diego’s native tongue has resulted in the use of the title “Our Lady of Guadalupe.” Francis Johnston, The Wonder of Guadalupe 46-48 (Tan 1981). (Apparently unaware of Mary’s statement to St. Bridget and the words on the Miraculous Medal, Mr. Johnston erroneously concludes: “It hardly seems likely that the Virgin would have referred to herself explicitly as the ‘Immaculate Conception’ since that dogma has not yet been defined. It was only after this dogma had been promulgated by the Church in 1854 that she publicly acknowledged (in 1858, at Lourdes) this unique dignity which God had bestowed on her.”) (3) In 1830, Mary selected the words “conceived without sin” to appear on the Miraculous Medal she entrusted to St. Catherine Laboure. (4) In 1858, our Blessed Mother selected the words “I am the Immaculate Conception” when identifying herself to St. Bernadette.

Mary’s decision to appear on these occasions (and possibly more) and make statements about her conception caused me to start looking for an analysis by the Church of Mary’s word choices regarding her conception. When I could not find any, I believed that I must have missed something, so I began writing to priests and lay people who I thought could direct me to the material I sought. No one could point me to anything. Most, such as the Rector of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, Father Pavone, Jeff Cavins, who appeared at my parish, and Patrick Madrid, the brother of a friend, simply did not respond to my written inquiries.

Father Donald Calloway, MIC, the Editor of the book The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the Life of the Church, advised me in 2007 that I had “a very insightful way of understanding when ensoulment occurs through the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception” and stated that he “wish[ed] I could point you in some direction for further reading, especially from the Church on this matter, but I’m afraid I do not have those resources. . . ”

I must be clear here. I do not analyze ensoulment through the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Rather, I analyze Mary’s words to see if She was saying something about the timing of ensoulment to the saints to whom she spoke and to the communities in which the saints lived.

Like Father Calloway, Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center also missed this difference in approaches when he recently wrote to me saying: “the dogma of the Immaculate Conception . . . can theologically and summarily be formulated as: ‘the immaculate ensoulment’. It does not deal with the question of the timing of ensoulment, either for Our Lady, or in general. It simply affirms that ensoulment, whenever it may have occurred for Our Lady, occurred in a manner different from yours and mine.”

Notably, Father Pacholczyk’s email to me made no mention of Mary’s intent in selecting the words she did, or what her audiences understood her words to mean at the time she appeared.

In that Mary appeared several times to talk about her conception occurring without sin or immaculately, I find it curious that many in the Church believe that when Mary appeared again and again using the same words, she was not talking about her conception, but rather her “ensoulment.”

As a preliminary matter, if Mary meant to talk about her ensoulment but wanted to make no mention of the timing of it, she could have easily used the word “ensoulment” or “ensouled” in speaking to the saints. Mary could have told St. Bridget “It is a truth that I was ensouled without original sin.” Mary could have requested that “ensouled without sin” appear on the Miraculous Medal. And Mary could have declared herself to be the “Immaculate Ensoulment” to St. Bernadette. Had Mary done so, I would agree that the “when” of her ensoulment would remain unknown, and more importantly, untold.

The fact that Mary did not use the word ensouled in speaking to St. Bridget is particularly intriguing given the debates that raged in the 1200s regarding the purity of Mary’s conception/ensoulment. See generally, Fr. Paul M. Haffner, S.T.D., The Anthropological Significance of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in The Virgin Mary and Theology of the Body 139-53 (Donald H. Calloway, MIC ed., 2005). Mary’s use of the words “It is a truth” before “that I was conceived without original sin” suggests that Mary was weighing in on the debates and purposely selected “conception” as the word which most fully represented the truth she meant to convey.

Additionally, if we accept that Mary, as Mother of God, and Queen of Heaven, knows what is happening on earth at the time she makes an appearance, and that Mary knows what will happen on earth after she makes an appearance, does it not make sense that at the time of her appearances in the 1300s, 1531, 1830, and 1858, Mary would know that in the future “laws that protect abortion . . . [would] rest on several false claims including that there is no certainly regarding when life begins, that there is no certainty about when a fetus becomes a person?” 2008 Pastoral Letter regarding Respect Life Sunday of Bishop Joseph Martino, former Bishop of the Diocese of Scranton, PA.

Mary would know. All mothers know that their children will do foolish things before they do them. All mothers warn their children against the danger beforehand. When the matter is important, a mother will leave a reminder about what she said even though she gave verbal instructions.

If revealing the moment of ensoulment was Mary’s intention by repeatedly selecting the words “conceived” and “conception” and then pairing those words with “immaculate” and “without sin,” the economy of her words to annunciate this reality was simply stunning, and thus, easy to miss. Perhaps that is why Mary felt the need to keep repeating herself and to leave visual reminders of her appearance (Juan Diego’s Tilma, the Miraculous Medal, the spring at Lourdes).

As Pope Benedict noted in his discussion about the Trinity people are sometimes slow and somewhat lazy in interpreting heavenly matters: “If there must be short tenets for expressing the tenets of our faith, then they should at least be attractive, exciting, something whose importance for men and for our lives is immediately apparent.”

Abortion, frozen embryos created during in vitro fertilization, and now stem cell research are all matters which warrant an examination of Mary’s word choices to see if they contain a deeper value that has been previously unappreciated. If you feel the same, I invite you to Petition the Church on this matter. I sent my own Petition on December 8, 2009 to:

Cardinal William Joseph Levada Prefect, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Piazza del S. Uffizio 11, 00193 Roma, Italy

Cardinal Justin Rigali Chairman of the Committee for Pro-Life Activities Archbishop of Philadelphia 222 N. 17th Street Philadelphia, PA 19103-1299

I’m afraid I still can’t concede to the possibility of zero souls based on this line of reasoning. If a squirrel eats an acorn, we can’t declare that the acorn was never an oak nut because it didn’t eventually grow into an oak tree. The potentiality was always there. In the same way, aborting a zygote that would have grown into identical twins doesn’t change that it would have done so.

I too, hope it does not annoy you to have comments on an older post.

I think Bill and thomblake have a point. I agree that if ensoulment did not occur at some point we’d also have to posit that full-grown adults have no soul, since they eventually die. However, we still must account for when the ensoulment occurs.

If ensoulment occurs at conception, we still have the problem of identical twins. If a zygote that splits into more than one fetus is given more than one soul, it implies that if God provides the appropriate number of souls for the amount of fetuses (or babies) the egg will grow into. This in turn implies that for a zygote that’s aborted before the fetus stage, God should give it zero souls.

The only solution to the problem that I can see is that God ensouls the fetus after conception, when the embryo is too developed for splitting to be biologically possible.

I think there would still be some ensoulment under those conditions. Otherwise, we’d also have to posit that full-grown adults have no soul, on account of them having an eventual death.

Hope it does not annoy you to have comments on an older post. (In truth, I was drawn here by your Ramaze tutorial, which is teh awesome)

Regarding Bill’s comment, while it does not necessarily follow, it certainly isn’t arbitrary. Logical necessity is not oft found in this world. The question that he presents is as follows:

If God provides the appropriate number of souls for the amount of babies the egg will grow into, then for an aborted zygote, why isn’t that number 0?

Also, do counterfactuals count? If a fertilized egg would have split down the line, were it not to have been aborted, then does it have multiple souls, even though it never ends up having multiple bodies? If yes, then why? (if we’re relying on God’s foreknowledge of actual events, which shouldn’t include counterfactuals) If no, then why not 0?

I’ve come across a thread in a Catholic forum in which the ensoulment of identical twins is discussed. Some interesting points of view are exchanged there.

A flaw in your preferred twin argument is that if God ensouls a zygote that will become identical twins with 2 souls, a zygote that will become identical triplets with 3 souls, etc, then God might simply not ensoul a zygote that will not survive for whatever reason, including non-spontaneous abortion.