70. It cannot be denied that this prohibition continued for some time in the Church. In the Penitential Canons of Theodorus, quoted by Ivo in his decree and mentioned by Cardinal Baronius under 266 A.D., it is said that "a woman who enters the church before her blood is clean after birth must do penance for thirty-three days if she brought forth a boy and for fiftysix days if she bore a girl. If any woman rashly enters the church before the prescribed time, she must do penance on bread and water for as many days as she should have stayed away from the church." But it also cannot be denied that this prohibition was removed in the Latin Church in the course of time. "If at the same hour as she has brought forth, a woman enters the church to give thanks, she does not commit any sin," said Pope Gregory, and his words are quoted in the Decree of Gratian, can. 2, dist. 5. In his decretal Volens, De purificatione post partum, Innocent III cites the text, "The law was given through Moses: grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." He adds that a woman who wishes not to enter the church for a time after childbirth is not forbidden to do so, but that a woman who comes to church does not sin. "So they commit no sin and are not to be forbidden to enter the churches. To forbid them would obviously imply that their punishment was a sin. Still if they want to stay away for some time out of a feeling of reverence, We do not believe that their devotion should be condemned."

The Blessed Virgin Mary willingly subjected herself to the law of Leviticus, although this law did not apply to her, when she presented herself and her divine Son in the Temple at the proper time after childbirth. In memory of this remarkable event, the rite which is found in the Roman Ritual published by order of Pope Paul V was established. After childbirth a woman goes to the church and is met at the door by a priest. He prays over her and sprinkles her with holy water. Then holding the hem of the priest's stole, she goes up to the altar, genuflects before it, and offers thanks to God for the benefits she has received. In the Latin church, however, this blessing of the woman after childbirth is not obligatory and there is no sin involved if it is omitted, although to omit it from contempt would be a sin as Quartus warns in his work de Benedictionibus, tit. 3, sect. 12, diff. 1).