rzman21, I do not find myself in agreement with you on many things, but in the matter of both the immaculate conception and papal infallibility, I cannot disagree with what you have said or the reasons you have given for saying it. Both of these teachings are, as someone said, solutions to non-problems.
Pius IX did more to harm the cause of Christian unity than any Pope in history.
I’m a Melkite Catholic who believes in papal primacy, but I stand with my Church in its rejection of Vatican I’s distortion of the role of the papacy in the Church.
Patriarch Gregory II refused to accept the council’s teaching and sent back a reservation to Rome saying the Melkite Catholic Church reserved all of its rights and privileges.
In antiquity, it took ALL five patriarchates to make a council infallible because it signaled the assent of the entire Church, not just the Church of the West.
My bishop was appointed by Benedict XVI, yet our diocesan website teaches that Vatican I was NOT an ecumenical council. So we simply do not teach papal supremacy in our eparchy.
The East says Mary is all-holy, and since we do not have an Augustinian semi-Manichaean understanding original sin. The immaculate conception is something we neither deny.
Even if Mary was conceived in holiness, she inherited the physical consequences of Adam’s sin, namely mortality.
Luther protested against the excesses of Marian devotion, but he retained a more of less Catholic understanding of Mary’s sinlessness.