We don’t believe it. The Immaculate Conception is a Roman Catholic dogma from 1854, and it’s not part of Orthodox teaching.
But that doesn’t mean we think Mary sinned. We honor her as the Theotokos, the Mother of God, and we believe she lived a completely sinless life. The difference is in how we understand what happened at her conception and what we mean by “original sin” in the first place.
What Catholics Mean by the Immaculate Conception
The Catholic dogma says Mary was preserved from original sin at the moment of her conception. She was given a special exemption, set apart from the rest of humanity before she was even born. This was necessary, Catholics argue, so she could be a pure vessel for Christ.
It’s a juridical solution to a juridical problem. If you think of original sin as inherited guilt, Adam’s personal sin charged to our account, then Mary needs to be exempted from that guilt to be worthy of bearing God.
How Orthodox Think Differently
We don’t think of original sin that way. We call it ancestral sin instead, and the difference matters.
Ancestral sin isn’t guilt we inherit. It’s the condition we inherit. Mortality. Corruption. A nature bent toward death and sin. We’re born into a broken world with broken bodies and broken wills, but we’re not personally guilty of what Adam did. That’s his sin, not ours.
Mary was born into that same condition. She inherited the same ancestral consequences we all do. She was mortal. She could have sinned.
But she didn’t.
Mary’s Sinlessness Was a Choice
This is where Orthodox teaching gets beautiful. Mary’s holiness wasn’t a divine exemption that bypassed her humanity. It was a cooperation with grace. She said yes to God at the Annunciation, and she’d been saying yes her whole life. The Holy Spirit filled her, purified her, strengthened her. And she chose, moment by moment, not to sin.
Could she have sinned? Yes. That’s what makes her obedience so remarkable. She wasn’t a pre-programmed saint. She was fully human, facing real temptation, and she chose God every single time.
We call her Panagia, which means “All-Holy.” We call her spotless and immaculate. But we mean she lived a sinless life through grace and free will, not that she was born with a different nature than the rest of us.
Why the Difference Matters
If Mary was exempted from ancestral sin at conception, she’s fundamentally different from us. She’s not quite one of us anymore. But Orthodox theology insists she’s fully human, fully one of us, because that’s the only way her “yes” means what it needs to mean.
When the angel came to her, she could have said no. The stakes were real. Her cooperation mattered. And because she said yes, because this young Jewish girl from Nazareth trusted God completely, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
That’s synergy, the cooperation between divine grace and human will that’s at the heart of Orthodox theology. God doesn’t override our freedom. He works with it. Mary shows us what that looks like when someone cooperates with grace perfectly.
What About “Only Christ Is Sinless”?
You’ll sometimes hear Orthodox prayers or hymns that say Christ alone is sinless. That’s true in a unique sense. Christ is sinless by nature, He’s God incarnate, incapable of sin. Mary’s sinlessness is different. She’s sinless by grace and choice. She depended on Christ’s saving power like the rest of us. She needed a Savior too.
The liturgy emphasizes Christ’s unique holiness because He’s the source of all holiness. Mary’s purity flows from Him, not the other way around.
Talking to Your Catholic Family
If you’ve got Catholic relatives here in Southeast Texas, and most of us do, this can be a tricky conversation. They love Mary. We love Mary. But we’re saying different things about her.
Don’t frame it as “Catholics are wrong.” Frame it as “we understand this differently.” Catholics developed the Immaculate Conception partly to honor Mary’s unique role. We honor that role too, just with a different theological framework.
The real difference is deeper than Mary. It’s about how we understand the Fall, how we understand grace, how we understand what it means to be human. Those are conversations worth having, but they take time.
For now, know this: Orthodox Christians believe Mary was sinless, pure, and holy beyond any other human being. We venerate her as Theotokos and ask her prayers constantly. We just don’t accept the specific Catholic dogma about how that holiness came to be. Fr. Thomas Hopko’s book The Winter Pascha has a good section on Mary that might help if you want to read more about how we honor her without accepting every Catholic formulation.
She’s our mother too. We just tell her story a little differently.
