This is the Church of the Immaculate Conception of San Agustin in Manila, one of the oldest churches in the Philippines.

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What Wilson and his disciples could never fully grasp is that "collective security" does not come about through a diplomatic version of the Immaculate Conception.

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That was followed by the even grimmer wars between Catholics and Huguenots, when it became okay, even morally desirable to, say, burn women and children alive for their views on the Immaculate Conception.

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The time of this project coincided with a large Marian trend: in 1661, Pope Alexander VII declared the Immaculate Conception (though it didn't become a dogma of the church until 1854).

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This year, the unions and business association chose to move the holiday on Dec. 6 celebrating the approval of the country's constitution following a four-decade dictatorship to a Monday rather than risk angering the church again by shifting the public holiday on Dec. 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

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Because December 8th was the Catholic solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, classes were canceled and the forty-one seminarians and ten professors at Saint Beuno's School of Theology could while away the wide hours of morning and afternoon in holy obedience to hobbies and exercise in the glens and pastures of northern Wales.

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