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can you point to anyone or anytime in scripture that God forced his will upon someone without their assent and consent ?

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Mary was not rewarded for her sinless life by getting the prize to be the mother of Jesus. She was set apart and chosen for that purpose and she accepted it humbly. Mary did not know her purpose until the Angel appeared to her at the annunciation. She simply asked how and immediately accepted with love for God.

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Faithful Ag said:

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God did not force himself on the Canaanites and was patient with them for centuries. They continued to live in their sinful ways and they were destroyed. This is a different thing altogether. They were given a choice, time to choose, and they chose poorly.

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… 1) a matter of typology, that Mary had to be sinless so that she could be in Eve's original state to undo through her obedience what Eve did through her disobedience, and showed how the stories of Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary suggested Mary's sinlessness. I also pointed out (2) how Marian teachings are a reflex of Christology; we Catholics believe what we do about Mary because of what we believe about Jesus.

... the Catechism itself uses the strong word "necessary" ("In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God's grace," 490), so we are obligated (if we would be thinking Catholics for whom the truths of the faith nourish devotion) to understand just how that necessity comes about in the economy of salvation. We will find that Mary needed to be sinless from conception, not a moment after, and that no one in her line needed to be sinless before her.

Some assert that since Christ alone needed to be protected from Mary's sin, God could simply have "zapped" Jesus himself from his conception in utero Mariae Virginis. The problem here is that Christ would not be fully human, for to be human is to share the very flesh of one's mother. Jesus inherits human nature from his mother, not abstract human nature separated from his mother. (As then-Cardinal Ratzinger once put it, "If Mary no longer finds a place in many theologies and ecclesiologies, the reason
is obvious: they have reduced faith to an abstraction. And an abstraction does not need a Mother.") So Mary needs to be sinless so that Jesus can be sinless (and he needs to be; God's presence cannot abide sin, and so the Incarnation requires Jesus's sinlessness). In short, if God zaps only Jesus, we wind up with a docetic, even Gnostic conception of Christ who hasn't assumed true human nature, and what is not assumed is not saved. We would be left to die in our sins.

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Put perhaps more simply, from Jesus's conception there is the perfect Chalcedonian unity of divine and human natures. The human nature needs to be true and sinless so Mary needs to be sinless, but only Mary had to be sinless from conception so as to pass on that true sinless human nature to her Son.
A few other considerations have come to me, which I think are important for delving deeper into the dogma. First, only Mary needs the preservation provided by the Immaculate Conceptionand not her parents behind herbecause as a normal non-divine human she's a potential sinner before conception. She's saved by grace, again proleptically, but still really and truly saved by the merits of Christ applied graciously to her. She can be sanctified from conception, but Ss. Anne and Joachim don't have to be. If it helps by way of analogy, some people regardless of parentage are touched by God's grace and cooperate to the point that they are saints on earth, while other people aren't, and remain sinners. So too with Mary's line.
But second, this also means that for Mary that preservation needs to be from conception and not an instant afterone could argue that God could have zapped her in utero sanctae Annae after animation (as I believe St. Thomas wrongly held; see ST III.27.2), or as a teenager, for instance, and sanctified her flesh at some later point. But that would mean she'd have had sin in her flesh for a time, even if for an instant, and even after zapping concupiscence would have remained (assuming Mary is a regular human, and after contracting Original Sin with its concupiscence, she certainly would have been), as with Baptism in the case of others saved by Christ's grace. Christ's human nature, then, would have been infected by concupiscence.
A third consideration flows from this second: The immaculate conception of Mary recognizes and affirms a distinction between Mary and Jesus. She's not a superhuman or some sort of deity, but needs sanctification because she was liable to sin in principle before conception; she is truly saved. Christ, however, is the Savior, not one in need of being saved. Precisely because of the Immaculate Conception, the flesh of Jesus Christ could never have been liable to the possibility of Original Sin, and, conversely, the sinless human nature of Jesus Christ requires he never be liable even to the possibility of contracting Original Sin in the Incarnation. (Of course, it was possible for him to sin actively, as he was in the position of the New Adam, with real free will, and was tempted by sin; see of course Matthew 4:111, the Temptation, and Hebrews 4:15.)

And that, I think, is something those who deny the Immaculate Conception who would otherwise be orthodox Christian believers need to answer: Exactly how does Christ get sinless flesh, if not by the mechanism spelled out in the Catholic economy of salvation? Protestant Christology ends up breaking down, I think, precisely because the original Reformers (for all their esteem of Mary) saw Mariology as a potential obstacle to Christ, not a gateway, as if the two were in theological competition, not cooperation. Substitutionary, vicarious atonement appropriated by means of justification through faith alone means Christ's person is cut off from us. There is no sacramental connection either to Jesus's sinless nature or his divine nature since all is by faith, Protestants having downplayed the necessity and efficacy of sacraments for salvation.

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diehard03 said:

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can you point to anyone or anytime in scripture that God forced his will upon someone without their assent and consent ?

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I would answer all of Scripture, but then we'd have differing views of God's will. Nothing in the text suggested that she had an alternative. Nothing in the text suggests that the Incarnation would have been thwarted because of her response. Obviously, it was a "biased" selection - God knew her response in advance. But to assume that she held the power or ability to stop the Incarnation is insane and undermines God, imo.

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Mary was not rewarded for her sinless life by getting the prize to be the mother of Jesus. She was set apart and chosen for that purpose and she accepted it humbly. Mary did not know her purpose until the Angel appeared to her at the annunciation. She simply asked how and immediately accepted with love for God.

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Then you have a problem with your fellow catholic, and not with me.

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God forcing a human to something without their consent is more consistent with Islam than Christianity. We believe in free will

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So basically if Catholic says black you say white. I don't feel like you have any interest in dialogue.

Really she is going to be like why didn't you give me the stain of sin, lol

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Some assert that since Christ alone needed to be protected from Mary's sin, God could simply have "zapped" Jesus himself from his conception in utero Mariae Virginis. The problem here is that Christ would not be fully human, for to be human is to share the very flesh of one's mother. Jesus inherits human nature from his mother, not abstract human nature separated from his mother. (As then-Cardinal Ratzinger once put it, "If Mary no longer finds a place in many theologies and

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There is no sacramental connection either to Jesus's sinless nature or his divine nature since all is by faith, Protestants having downplayed the necessity and efficacy of sacraments for salvation.

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Quad Dog said:

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Some assert that since Christ alone needed to be protected from Mary's sin, God could simply have "zapped" Jesus himself from his conception in utero Mariae Virginis. The problem here is that Christ would not be fully human, for to be human is to share the very flesh of one's mother. Jesus inherits human nature from his mother, not abstract human nature separated from his mother. (As then-Cardinal Ratzinger once put it, "If Mary no longer finds a place in many theologies and

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If he was born to a sinless mother, then he wasn't fully human. How many humans have been born to sinless mothers?

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diehard03 said:

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There is no sacramental connection either to Jesus's sinless nature or his divine nature since all is by faith, Protestants having downplayed the necessity and efficacy of sacraments for salvation.

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Truth. This guy is pretty smart. We don't believe it be necessary or efficacious at all.

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Quad Dog said:

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Some assert that since Christ alone needed to be protected from Mary's sin, God could simply have "zapped" Jesus himself from his conception in utero Mariae Virginis. The problem here is that Christ would not be fully human, for to be human is to share the very flesh of one's mother. Jesus inherits human nature from his mother, not abstract human nature separated from his mother. (As then-Cardinal Ratzinger once put it, "If Mary no longer finds a place in many theologies and

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If he was born to a sinless mother, then he wasn't fully human. How many humans have been born to sinless mothers?

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Even if he was born to a sinless human mother, his human NATURE was still inherited from his human mother, unless you are arguing Mary wasn't human.

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Zobel said:

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In Christian theology sin is foreign to human nature. Humans existed before sin. Christ is more human than us, not less.

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Zobel said:

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There's only been one. Christ is THE human. He's called the firstfruit, and the entirety of Christianity is to become what He is.

Absence of sin and perfect or completed humanity aren't the same thing.

At any rate, the point is that sin is not part of human nature. It's a foreign thing that corrupts it, not something inherent to it.

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DirtDiver said:

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Was Mary sinless? If so, she wouldn't need a savior. When Mary calls God her Savior, what does she need salvation from? Physical danger, political rule, her own sins?

She claims God as her savior.

Luke 2:
46 And Mary said:
"My soul exalts the Lord,
47 And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.

If you look at the genealogies in both Luke and Matthew you see a list of sinners. It's reason to assume Mary is without sin or that it's a requirement that God cannot enter humanity through the womb of a sinner.

Adam - sinner
David - sinner
Rahab - sinner

Also likely that she lost her virginity.
55 Is this not the carpenter's son? Is His mother not called Mary, and His brothers, James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? 56 And His sisters, are they not all with us?
3 Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon?

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God is not bound to time and space the same way we are. Mary still needed her savior but she was saved from original sin from the very beginning of her existence - Like Eve, Mary was created without original sin. Unlike Eve, Mary was loving and perfectly obedient to God and lived a life free from sin. She was full of grace. Complete enmity with satan.

To say she was free from sin is not to say she did not need a savior.

Mary did not have other children. Her only child was Jesus. She lived her life as a perpetual virgin. Your claim about his brothers and sisters does not hold up under basic scrutiny, even if you confine yourself only to scripture.

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Even the hypothetical sinless person after the fall would still be subject to death. God saves from sin and death.

As noted the Church consensus has held Mary to be the bride unwedded and having no other children for as long as we have records. Those mentioned are not called her children, and they are not present to take care of her after Christ is crucified.

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Was Mary sinless? If so, she wouldn't need a savior. When Mary calls God her Savior, what does she need salvation from? Physical danger, political rule, her own sins?

She claims God as her savior.

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The Bible claims Jesus had brothers and sisters. It doesn't make it clear if they were from Joesph or Mary, however there's nothing biblical make one believe she remained a virgin. Is she did and remained with Joseph she would be depriving her husband as in Eph. 1 would she not?

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Occam's razor in a discussion about the virgin birth hardly seems relevant.

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Orthodoxy says she died, yes - our feast is of the Dormition, the falling asleep, of the Theotokos.

If you're sticking to the scripture and nothing else you only know that the Lord had family relatives that were called brothers. This could include half brothers, and if you want to get into semiticisms (and there are plenty in the Greek of the NT) then it could include cousins as well. You're also left to wonder where those brothers are, when the Lord entrusts His mother to St John. Likewise St Joseph.

Even further, if you want to take a strict, literal reading of the text then St Joseph was His father (Luke 2:48). So obviously a literal reading of the text is not always preferable.

The bible never says Joseph was her husband or that they were married.

The early Church read the gospels too, and yet they near universally held that she was a virgin and had no other children. These aren't shocking revelations.

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There is a "baptisty" brother and sisters namely in the letters however that doesn't seem to be the way those words are being used the narrative gospels. Those brothers could have been on vacation, out of town, working, hiding, or elsewhere when Jesus said those words to John. While we wonder we cannot say this provides evidence that Mary didn't have other kids. We know Jesus favored John very much.

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The phrase, "kept her a virgin until she gave birth" implies a change after birth.

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