In other words, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception does not contend that Mary’s birth was the result of something other than a union between a woman and a man, or that Mary was anything but fully human, but only that she was the recipient, by a divine necessity that later would be confirmed by the action of her will, of certain extraordinary graces that preserved her from inheriting that tendency for evil to which humankind is subject, and prepared her to become the vessel through which Christ would become incarnate in the world.