by Paul Eliefrom Georgetown University
Freedom Is Not Immaculate
"Whoever made the Feast of the Immaculate Conception the patronal feast of the United States understood America.
"The dogma that Mary from the moment of conception was free from the stain of original sin invites reflection on that central theme of American history: what it means to be free."
That’s not Garry Wills, or Isaac Hecker, or Alexis de Tocqueville. That’s Paul Rourke, chaplain at the Georgetown University Law Center, and his short reflection on the feast — which falls today — is itself a feast of insight: a few points, surprising at first, that, once made, seem incontestable.
Americans historically have conceived freedom as “freedom from” — whether the outlaw in the West or the Tea Party in the Capitol. But the biblical tradition that came to bear on Mary is a “freedom for” — for family, for community, for the larger society, for a vision of justice global and eternal in scope — and the Immaculate Conception is a feast “for all who seek freedom in, through, and for love.”
The university’s Advent daily e-mail goes to people in the Georgetown community — something like five thousand of us — who have asked to get it by ticking a box. It shows up, and it does its work, straight through till Christmas.
That vintage postcard shows the shrine to Mary Help of Christians overlooking Friess Lake in Wisconsin.