Mary was in the same position as “Adam and Eve” were in the Genesis story. They, too, were born without taint of sin, and yet had the free will to accept, or reject, God’s commands.
But that’s not the meat of your question. The meat of your question is, “If God could make everyone sinless, and He presumably can because He did so with Mary, then why doesn’t He? Why continue to subject countless humans to the ravages of pain that come with sin?”
I don’t know the answer to that.
Please note that this doesn’t invalidate the concept. There are plenty of things I don’t know the answer to, and yet they happen. What makes gravity work? What is it, what’s the essential nature of mass that creates a pull on other mass? I don’t know.
But I’m prepared to accept that mass inherently creates gravity.
I appreciate your honesty, but I do think that this points to a flaw which is common in Christian thought. Earlier you said “That the Assumption happened is the natural consequence of Catholic belief in the nature and effect of sin, and in the belief of the conception of Mary without sin, so that the human vessel in which God was made Man would be sinless.”
This implies that Catholic understand, or at least believe that they underestand, the workings of sin and free will (it’s not clear whether you’re saying “As a Catholic, I believe this” or “I am explaining what Catholics believe”, so I’ll address the latter). So they should have an answer to my question. Either they understand sin or they don’t. If they do, then they should have an answer to my question. If they don’t, they have no business presenting their conjectures as established fact.
To continue with your gravity analogy, suppose you were to say “It’s not possible to move an object into space, because gravity pulls everything towards the Earth”. I reply “So how did the astronauts make it to the moon?” You reply “Hey, don’t ask me. I don’t understand gravity. Not that that invalidates my previous statement”. Sorry, but it does. Either Christianity is a logical enterprise founded on knowledge accessible to humans which can be analysed within the limits of human understanding, or it’s not. So many Christians want to have their cake and eat it too; they present logical arguments for why what they believe is true, but when challenged with further logical arguments they dismiss them on the grounds that Chirstianity is beyond logic.
False dichotomy. Let’s stay with my gravity analogy. We understand the inverse-square law; we can offer precise predictions about how gravity behaves. But we do not understand what, precisely, about mass CAUSES gravity, other than the observation that it does.
So, too, in this situation. There’s a big difference between: “Here is how sin works, and how it comes to all of us, and an example of how God chose to exempt Mary from the process,” and “Here is WHY God does these things.”
The first is a rather mechanical observation about the nature of sin, similar to the observations about how gravity works. The second is a much more fundamental “Why?” that we cannot explain. Just as we can devise rather precise rules to explain and predict the operation of gravity without being able to articulate what actually makes gravity HAPPEN, so, too, can we offer rules about sins and its effect on people without understanding WHY God would implement such a system.
This is an inapposite comparison. I’m not asserting anything that’s contrary to another observation, as you posit above. I’m saying that, based on our observations, we understand the mechanics, but not the fundamental reasons that they happen. In your analogy, you offer a mechanical conclusion and a mechanical obervations that differs from it. If I had said that sin always leads to death, but that some sinful people don’t die, I certainly couldn’t hide behind the rubric of, “Hey, I dunno the details.” That would, indeed, be inconsistent, and in line with your analogy.
But that’s not what I’ve said. My analogy is: I know the rule of gravity, the inverse square law, and the gravitational constant. But I don’t know what actually causes gravity to exist.
There may well be Christians that claim to know the answer to the question of why God does what He does; I am not one of them. But I see no inconsistency in my saying that I understand the mechanics of sin, and yet don’t understand WHY God set up the system this way.
Now, you may argue that the mere fact that we can’t produce a logical argument for why God set up the system this way suggests that God didn’t set up the system at all. I disagree. It’s undeniable that gravity exists, even if we cannot discern what causes it.
Mary was conceived free from original sin. In other words, she didn’t have the sinful nature that the rest of humanity has. Did she have free will? Absolutely. Adam and Eve, remember were also created free from original sin, and we all know how that turned out.
As for her not dying… well, physically, she did. But her body was taken up into Heaven and glorified, just as Jesus was, and all Christians hope to be. Actually, Eastern Rite Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox Churches refer to this as the Dormition, or falling asleep, to emphasize the fact that though her vital functions may have ceased, she did not truly die.
**
All sinners are subject to spiritual death, meaning eternal separation from God (otherwise known as Hell). Due to original sin, we are all subject to physical death, but Christ died to save us from spiritual death, which is the consequence of actual sin, which is the result of the exercise of free will.
Why have Jesus die?
According to OT Law, without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of sin. Hence the animal sacrifices. Therefore Jesus, being God, chose to die on the Cross so that the sins of all humankind could be forgiven.
Could God have saved us another way, or just said, “OK, all bets are off, everything’s forgiven”? Yes. He’s God, he can do that.