On the Immaculate Conception

I was having a conversation last week with a "fallen away" Catholic (I don't really know if he was raised Catholic or how much that he actually believes right now) about the Immaculate Conception. Please pray for him so that he'll come to understand the fullness of Truth, including Purgatory, the Mass, the Eucharist, Confession, the Liturgy of the Hours, the authority of the Church, and so on.

Well, for one of my Reformation history classes, we have to read three of Luther's Treatises. In one of them (the one on sola fide), Luther mentions that the "Virgin Mary," as he always refers to her, didn't need to be purified, but that she went so that she might follow the appearance of the law. Essentially, she went so that she wouldn't scandalize the other Jewish women. Well, if you look at Luke 2:22, the verse of the Presentation and Purification, there is a reference to Lev. 12:2-8. If you read those referenced verses, you will find this:

"She shall not touch anything sacred nor enter the sanctuary till the days of her purification are fulfilled" (Lev. 12:4).

Now this might not seem that important, but it is actually quite important. If Mary couldn't touch anything that was pure, then she couldn't touch her Son. Keep in mind, that she knew that He was the Savior at this time, and so she knew that He was purer than the Ark of the Covenant (especially since she was the new Ark of the Covenant since she carried the Holy One of God in her womb, months before). It would have been scandalous, by the same nature that her not going for the purification would have been scandalous, to not touch, hold, and nurse her child. Mary and Jospeh were poor. She wouldn't have been able to afford a wet nurse (I don't even know if they had wet nurses at that time). So she would have nursed Christ. It would have been unthinkable for her not to. Thus, she would've have touched her child, who happened to be pure. So either Mary sins by touching something while she is unpure and then gets purified 40 days later, or she was never unpure to begin with, i.e. Immaculate Conception.

If Mary was unpure, and sinned by breaking the law and touching something holy, then the Gospels surely would've had something about that. Every other instance where someone breaks a law, the either die (or are severely harmed) or they repent. Both of these instances are clearly described by Scripture as to be a learning experience. Neither of these occur with Mary. She never repents, and her Son surely would've had her repent if she needed too, since everyone agrees that He did love her quite a lot. She also doesn't suffer dearly for her sins. Simeon tells her that her soul will be pierced through with a sword (cf. Luke 2:35). The soul being pierced does not have to do with atonement for sin. It is clearly a prophecy of her place at the foot of the Cross on Calvary. It would be foolish to think that it even could be her punishment for a sin of touching something unclean when she was waiting to be purified.

That leaves us with the only other option: that she was pure from the beginning. If that is so, then she must've been immaculately conceived.