Oh, the theological gymnastics necessary to work through all the assertions regarding Jesus’s birth by way of Mary! I say this not to cast aspersions upon Mary but upon the theologians that worked very hard to construct an edifice rather like a Jenga® tower whereby the removal of even one block threatens the entire structure. Yet I recognize that what the life of Jesus Christ means to me does not rest upon anything related to the “status” of Mary’s hymen or womb, or even her sanctity, and so mine is a voice from outside the circle.

But when a day is set aside annually to honor the conception of Mary, then it’s useful to look at the edifice and wonder at (and about) its construction.

1. It begins with the fact that Mary gave birth to Jesus.
2. Then it follows with the theological assertion that Jesus is both the Son of God and God incarnate.
3. It’s that both-and that makes this next assertion necessary: given that Jesus happens also to BE God, then at no time could Jesus have been encased in anything that was not utterly holy and pure. That is, God cannot be “housed” in anything with the slightest shade of impurity. Therefore, Mary’s womb must be pure.
4. For Mary’s womb to be pure, Mary must have a womb that housed nothing and no one ever except for God, and thus Mary must have been a virgin before and through the birth of Jesus.
5. Not only must Mary’s womb have been pure, but Mary herself must have been pure, as she contained God within her being during the entirety of Jesus’s gestation.
6. For Mary to have been pure, then she must have been sinless herself.
7. This means that Mary must have been exempt from the taint of original sin that has been imputed to all humanity since Adam and Eve.
8. This means that Mary was herself (necessarily) conceived immaculately (i.e., without any original sin).
9. This then implicates a special dispensation involving Mary’s parents and her birth.
10. This also means that Mary, both before and certainly while pregnant, never had so much as a single impure thought–including (whether you consider such to be impure or not, these theologians did and do) any sexual desires. This is an essential block in this tower, because were Mary to have had such desires, it would have perforce been for a human, and, by necessary implication, not for God.

The Latin term coined by theologians for this sexual desire that Mary was immune from is fomes peccati: literally, “flammable sin.”

Theologians, over the centuries, were not content to leave it at those ten blocks, because one question is forced by all these assertions: Did sinless Mary need Jesus to save her? If so, why? And from what? And how?!

So now block 11: The fact that Jesus was born of Mary (an inversion of point #1) requires points #2 through #10, and thus, as Butler effuses, “Christ was no less her Redeemer, Reconciler, and most perfect Saviour and Benefactor by preserving her from this stain, than he would have been by cleansing her from it”–that is, because the fact of Jesus-as-God required a pure Mary, this is how Jesus became her Redeemer…not by her repentance but by necessity.

So we come full circle.