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My question concerns the idea of Mary's pre-emptive
salvation.
If she was granted a special
grace by the Holy Spirit which allowed
her to be conceived free of original sin and
therefore live her life free of personal
sin, how could she be said to have had free will?
If she didn't have free will, does this undermine
the significance of her willingness to carry
the Christ?
Brock
{
Does
Mary's special grace of pre-emptive salvation contradict
her free will and, if so, . . .? }
John and Mike gave the following team reply:
Hi, Brock —
In the same way Adam, Eve and even Satan were all
created with out sin, all of them had free will.
They chose
to rebel; Mary did not. Grace
and sinlessness do not undermine free will, rather they allow for a more
perfect exercise of it. We, who have been baptized, are regenerated and also have free will, but our free will is still effected by our
tendency to sin (due to concupiscence). It will always be this way until we are six feet under
the ground . . . buried. That is why we are so quick to fall over and over
again.
Mary, on the other hand, had perfect free will as she was never a slave
to sin. In a sense, God gave Mary the same opportunity to say Yes to
Him and No to satan, as Eve had. Both Eve and Mary were
sinless, both Eve and Mary were tempted but the Catechism goes on to tell
us: