Before I became a Catholic, I was a Serbian Orthodox with 'Catholic leanings'. I was unable to accept the Dogma of Papal Infallibility, not because I disagreed with it, but because I did not believe in the Immaculate Conception. I am a Thomist, and the Angelic Doctor did not believe in the Immaculate Conception either, ergo that was good enough for me. So, how could an infallible Pope define a false doctrine as Dogma?
So, on one Saturday night, I was alone in St Paul's Student Centre at Wichita State University. I attended Holy Mass there when I couldn't make it to my Orthodox parish for Divine Liturgy. I had gotten to know the Chaplain well enough that, when he locked the Centre at night, if I was there, he locked me in to use the library. There was a crash bar so I could get out. At any rate, I was in the library when I found a little booklet, published probably in the late 50's or early 60's, entitled 'Catholics and Orthodox--Can They Unite?' I came upon a chapter on the Immaculate Conception and, to my amazement, I read a quote from one of my great heroes, Georgios Scholarios, the Patriarch Gennadios II. Gennadios was the first Patriarch of Constantinople after The City fell to the infidel jihadists and he was also a prominent Aristotelian-Thomist, one of the few in Orthodoxy, which tends to be Platonist. He had translated the Summa Theologica into Greek and when he reached the section on the Immaculate Conception, he said, 'Thomas was a wise man and indeed may be a Saint (he had been canonised in the West almost 200 years earlier), but on this point he was wrong!' To my amazement, I learned that the doctrine had first been developed in the Orthodox East, but as the West came to view it favourably, the East reacted against it.
At that point, my last defence against Catholicism gone, I walked into the small Chapel where Daily Mass was said and the Blessed Sacrament was reserved. I fell to my knees in front of Our Lord and began to cry. A few minutes later, I stood up, a Catholic!
When I became a Carmelite Tertiary I took 'Mary of the Immaculate Conception' as my name in Religion, and each of my children, male or female, has Mary as one of their baptismal names in her honour.
As the Christians of Ephesus shouted in the Streets after the Ecumenical Council there in AD 431 declared Her to be Theotokos, Mother of God:
BLESSED BE THE GREAT MOTHER OF GOD, MARY MOST HOLY!!!
And, as the Divine Praises add:
Blessed be her Holy and Immaculate Conception!
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