Text from The Saint Andrew Daily Missal,
unless otherwise stated.
Saint Damasus I.
Pope and Confessor.
Feast Day 11 December.
Semi-Double.
White Vestments.
English: 19th-Century imagined portrait of Pope Saint Damasus I. (Papacy 366 A.D.-384 A.D.).
Português: Lithography of Pope Saint Damasus I
(Lisboa, 1840).
Source: Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal: http://purl.pt/6209/1/
Institution: National Library of Portugal.
Author: Pedro Augusto Guglielmi.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Pope Saint Damasus I, of Spanish extraction, succeeded Pope Liberius in the See of Saint Peter in 366 A.D. He thus shared the dignity of the one whom the Epistle calls “the Holy Pontiff, innocent without stain, higher than the heavens”.
He governed The Church seventeen years and showed himself the faithful and prudent servant mentioned in the Gospel, to whom “The Lord entrusts His family to be nourished by him in due Season.”
This holy Pope increased the beauty of worship by his rules for the singing of Psalms, and by decreeing that the Gloria Patri should be said at the end of Psalms, thus Baptising them, so to speak, in The Trinity. He adorned the Catacombs with artistic inscriptions, and died in 384 A.D.
Mass: Sacerdótes tui.
Commemoration: Of the Octave of The Immaculate Conception.
Commemoration: Of the Feria.
The Creed is Said or Sung: On account of the Octave of The Immaculate Conception.
Preface: Of The Blessed Virgin Mary.
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Because Zephyrinus rightly emphasizes the importance of the Catholic octaves of major feasts, like the Immaculate Conception, to let us dwell more deeply on the mysteries involved each succeeding day, it led this writer to go back again, and look at John Duns Scotus (d.1308), the Scottish Franciscan theologian, and how he eventually carried the day regarding the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The Univ of Dayton (US) has a very good analysis of the Scotus’ thinking process which eventually won over Catholic believers though roughly 6 centuries later, with the formal declaration by Pius IX in 1854:
ReplyDeletehttps://udayton.edu/imri/mary/j/john-duns-scotus-on-the-immaculate-conception.php
Great theologians in their own right, such as S. Thomas Aquinas, S. Bernard of Clairvaux, and others, could not reconcile the idea of the Mary’s Immaculate Conception with Christ’s act of redemption. They cited Romans 5:12: S. Paul says that sin infected the whole human race. So how could the Blessed Virgin be without sin?
The Scotus saw the problem. The great theologians and saints of the Catholic Church agreed that Mary was preserved from actual sin: but somehow, either prior to her conception, or at the moment after conception, she had to be freed from original sin. Or so they thought.
Duns Scotus observed that if Christ preserved the Blessed Virgin from actual sin, He certainly had the power as God to preserve her from original sin, and there was no reason for Him not to do so.
He then observed what S. Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109) himself had said: “ potuit, decuit, ergo fecit” (God could do it, it was appropriate, therefore he did it). Basically, “Why not?” This is a shorthand summary of course.
It took a while, but eventually everyone came around to the idea that there is no good reason not to believe that the Blessed Virgin is the Immaculate Conception. After all, how could Christ become incarnate from a human infected by original sin? And was not Christ without him in his flesh? So Mary also was without sin, including original sin.
-Note by Dante P
An outstanding Comment from our Historical Correspondent, Dante P.
DeleteWe are most grateful for this illuminating Comment.