IVE Genesis Immaculate Conception Conference 7 February 2013 (pdf).
– Just thought I would put the text up for those who would like to prepare a bit, or for those who cannot attend.
– Those of you who know anything about Scripture and academics will know that there is something rather of interest here.
I have some extra time to put this up since there are serious “battery” problems with the flight from Charlotte to Washington, D.C. Not a good sign these days.
The scene at Charlotte, NC airport (the skyline is in the background) while waiting for the battery to fixed, changed out, on the plane. 7 February 2013. Yikes!
Update: O.K. We’re boarding the flight, finally! Poor IVEs, who are picking me up at Reagan National Airport.
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
You’re going to be sensational ! I’ve been praying to St John Chrysostom – the patron saint of Public Speakers. He and I have been friends a long time. You’re a cinch.
Boo! I can’t get to the file. Are other people having trouble?
Oh and battery problems? How apt – this morning we were at a museum watching an IMAX on the Boeing 787′s creation – pretty inspirational story but then as we were leaving it dawned on us, “OH! That’s the plane having all the battery problems!” And then I read your post! Yikes!!!
Yay! Downloaded it – don’t know why I couldn’t get to it before.
I’ve just read the text and, George, it’s eye-wateringly wonderful
)) I have no doubts at all that you’ll be the talk of the conference!
Dear Fe George,
Thank you so much for the PDF – a very clear explication of your thesis, comprehensible and and make great sense to me. I have to qualify this by stating that I am totally ignorant of the debate surrounding this area. Still, you explain so clearly the multiple generations of the heavens and the earth, and your argument leads very logically to your conclusion that the Immaculate Conception is “the great warrior of the Church Militant”. I trust that your presentation was well-received by those in attendance and hopefully will lead others to read Genesis with new eyes.
Father Byers, wow! I never thought about the animal skins God provided for Adam and Eve being as being as you have described them! I find the observation fascinating! To actually contemplate that although physical death had not yet been known to them, God provides a penance which does not allow them to escape the reality of physical death and decay. I can hardly wrap my mind around the smell or the physical irritation of these garments or the irritating critters they would attract. I also can’t help but to think of the garments of St. John the Baptist in regards to this, it is, as if, his cries for repentance reach all the way back to the original sin.
I guess I’m just a simple Catholic shocked that there even is a debate surrounding Genesis and the Immaculate Conception at all! Thank God you are attempting to enlighten Catholics everywhere that Genesis actually speaks of Our Lady. It’s awesome that your research into this simply confirms what simple uneducated Catholics like me just take on faith. May your thesis and your talk on it bear much fruit.
Rory: Yikes!
A very powerful text. It brings to my mind the connections between Our Lady of Guadalupe, the image of the Immaculate Conception, the Woman clothed with the sun, and the fact that the Spanish word Guadalupe sounded like the Indian words for “I am the one who crushes the head of the serpent.” In crushing the serpent, Our Lord took the nails in His Feet, and His Blessed Mother shared spiritually in His pain. She is indeed a warrior, and our prayers are magnified through her. Someone once said that in Mary, it is as if mankind never sinned. What hope it gives us poor sinners to have her as a Mother.
Diana T.: Yikes! I never thought of the nails being smashing into our Lord’s feet on the cross were so very much like the poisonous fangs of a gargantuan serpent. Could you find something on those Indian words about our Lady of Guadalupe for us, please?
It does seem that in our limited contemplation of high spiritual realities, the more ordered, related, and fitting the truths are- merging into one Divine Truth that is all at the same time simple, lofty and beautiful.
http://www.motherofallpeoples.com/2011/12/our-lady-of-guadalupe-and-the-immaculate-conception/
http://www.sancta.org/nameguad.html
http://www.catholic.org/hf/faith/story.php?id=44004
http://catholickey.blogspot.com/2010/12/immaculate-conception-of-guadalupe.html
Diana: Wow! O.K. Let me get through some other projects while looking forward to going through this. Looks totally awesome!