For My Money, One of the Weakest Arguments Against the Immaculate Conception

A reader writes:

I have always understood that the woman of Revelation to be the Blessed Mother. I was discussing the Immaculate Conception with a Baptist co-worker, specifically how she had no pain during child birth; he replied that if that was the case that she couldn’t be the woman of Revelation as “she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered.” I must admit that this was a good point.

Would you be able to offer some insights?

From Mary, Mother of the Son, Volume 2: First Guardian of the Faith. This is from the chapter on the Immaculate Conception:

Beyond that, we are left with only increasingly weak attempts to argue for Mary’s sinfulness from increasing frail evidence. One argument, oddly enough, accepts that Mary is the woman of Revelation 12 after all. However, since Revelation says the woman was “with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery” (Rev. 12:2) then (the claim goes) she must be sinful since this is the punishment prescribed for Eve after the fall:

To the woman he said,
“I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children (Gen. 3:16).

Even to me, who had deeply assumed there was something in Scripture contradicting the Immaculate Conception, this was an exceedingly weak claim. By the logic of this argument, it would also be possible to indict Jesus as a sinner since he suffered, toiled, sweated, and died, just like Adam (cf. Gen. 3:17-19).

But more fundamentally, there’s a peculiar tone-deafness to the argument. It’s like saying, “Okay! I grant that Mary is the Cosmic Queen of the Universe, crowned with twelve stars, clothed with the majesty of the sun, and treading the moon under her feet with the awesome glory that God has bestowed upon her! But what’s this? Is that a thread I spy hanging loose on her garments that outshine the sun?” It’s a very silly argument, particularly since the language used by Revelation is so close to the imagery of the “birth pangs of the kingdom” (Matt. 24:8) used by her Son and can easily be taken to refer to the “sword” that pierced her soul at the Passion, not to physical labor pains.

You can get the whole trilogy here.