It was this vivacity of Marian worship which led Pope Pius IX to face the question of the Immaculate Conception in view of a proclamation of the dogma.
His first act was to institute a commission of theologians and a commission of cardinals to discuss the terms to be used. In the face of a lack of perfect agreement, and also at the advice of Rosmini, the Pope promulgated the encyclical Ubi primum with which he sought to know the attitude of the individual Bishops. An opinion totally in favour of the dogma led the pontiff to prepare the Ineffabilis Deus bull with which the dogma was defined: “.: “After offering to God, through His Son, in humility and fasting, the prayer of Church and our own prayer, that he would deign to direct and confirm our thought with the grace of the Holy Spirit, invoking the help of the Church triumphant and imploring with groans the Holy Spirit with his assistance in honour of the holy and undivided Trinity, - in honour and decor of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic faith and for the development of the Christian religion, - with the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostles Saints Peter and Paul and Our authority, we declare, proclaim and define that the doctrine which affirms that that the Blessed Virgin Mary, through singular grace and privilege which Almighty God granted to her in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, was preserved from all stain of original sin from the first instant of her creation, has been revealed by God and is therefore to be firmly believed” .
However the definition was elaborated in a negative form and concerned solely immunity from original sin, presupposing the definition of Mary’s redemption by Christ.
The points not clarified by Pius IX with regard to this special privilege and Mary’s perfect redemption by Christ, were explained later by the encyclicals Ad diem illum by Puis X and Fulgens corona by Pius XII.
Fruit of much consultation with the Bishops since 1848, the definition was founded mainly on the authority of the Pope foreshadowing the definition of the personal infallibility of the Roman Pontiff; the method used in the dogmatic bull, starting from consensus in the Church and interpreting in this light past testimony opened new paths for theology, widely followed from then onwards.
Pius XII, in Fulgens corona, explained the method used by Pius IX: “When Our predecessor decreed in the Apostolic Letter that this tenet of Christian doctrine was to be firmly and faithfully believed by all the faithful, he was merely carefully conserving and sanctioning with his authority the teaching of the Fathers and of the whole Church from its earliest days right down through the centuries.”
The definition led to an increase of devotion to Our Lady. However this was not the only happy result of the definition: “ <<Mind you – Mgr. Talbot is reported to have said a few days earlier – it is not the dogma in itself, but how it is proclaimed which is important >>. In effect when on November 20 two bishops asked the cardinal president if it would not be better to mention in the Bull, the approval of the Bishops they were told: <<if the Supreme Pontiff pronounces alone the definition with the spontaneous agreement of all the faithful, his judgement will offer a practical demonstration of the Church’s sovereign authority in matters of doctrine and the infallibility with which Jesus Christ entrusted his Vicar on earth >>”.
Father Martina summarises “The impact of the definition was multiple: it strengthened the authority of the Pope (prelude to the dogma on papal infallibility); it encouraged theological study, while underlining the necessity of submission to the Magisterium, from an angle, yesterday like today, considered differently; it fostered popular Marian devotion; it underlined some religious truths denied or neglected by modern thought (supernatural order, man’s elevation as a child of God, original sin, the Redemption).
Today the Feast of the Immaculate Conception is celebrated in all eastern Churches, dissident and Catholic except for the Syrian Monophysite and Nestorian Chaldean traditions. Traditionally it was kept on 9 December and in the title emphasis was laid on St Anne’s “active conception of”: “when Anne conceived the Mother of God”. Churches united with Rome celebrate the feast on December 8 with the same title as the Latins.
In the West in the Middle Ages the feast was called, the “Norman Feast”, because people were convinced that the Normans encountered the feast in Sicily and southern Italy and then carried to Normandy and England. However modern liturgical studies revealed that the western origin of the feast was in fact the Celtic church in Ireland.
As we have said, it was Pope Sixtus IV who made the feast universal. In 1476 he issued a papal bull establishing the same indulgences granted by his predecessors for the feast of Corpus Christi.
Clement XI made the feast a holy day of obligation for the whole Church.
When the dogma was defined in 1854, three Mass and Office formulas existed in the Latin Church but in 1863 Pius IX, encouraged by many bishops, decided to order the drafting of a new liturgical text in keeping with the dogmatic definition to render with precision the truth defined. The final text, prepared by Mons. Bartolini secretary of the Congregation for Rites, was approved on 27 August 1863. The feast was called the feast of the Immaculate Conception. On 25 September of the same year with an apostolic brief the pontiff abolished the existing formulas making the new text for the Mass and the Office for the feast and the octave compulsory for the whole Church.
Pope Leo XIII, 30 November 1879, extended the obligation of the Vigil to the whole Church.
Among interventions in modern times we mention the Angelus address by Pope Paul VI on the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception in 1974. The Pontiff says: “ … But today we are filled with wonder, with great happiness: one creature, only one, but one of us, the one who was to be the Mother of Christ, was redeemed by Christ ahead of time and restored the original perfection, typical and sublime, of the creature «full of grace», a woman, the «blessed among all women». Her name is Mary. O sons and daughters, o brothers, disheartened and disappointed perhaps by modern psychoanalytical research and the discovery of incurable contamination in the profundity of the human being, restore with confidence the concept of innocence and hope for a perfect purity for our being, made of flesh and spirit: the «case», the miracle of Mary restores in us the image of the perfection of God’s handiwork that we are, and of which Mary is the intact and purest example: yes such is Mary.
You who search for beauty, often seeking it in the unbalance between flesh and spirit, disfiguring it, remember that purity and beauty coincide: «by antonomasia decor belongs to chastity - Maestro Thomas teaches us-, and therefore – he says -, virginity belongs to beauty super excellent » (S. Theol. II, II, 152, 5). And so today the Church urges us to sing: all beautiful your are, o Maria!
Are you searching for the joy and liberation of a new life? Recite and meditate the «Magnificat», the prophetic hymn of Immaculate Mary . …”.