John of Shanghai and San Francisco aka "St. John the Wonderworker" contra the Immaculate Conception

According to an article by Aidan Kimel (available here), John of Shanghai and San Francisco aka Mikhail Borisovich Maximovitch aka St. John the Wonderworker (June 4, 1896, to July 2, 1966), rejected the immaculate conception on the following grounds:

1. “The teaching of the complete sinlessness of the Mother of God does not correspond to Sacred Scripture, where there is repeatedly mentioned the sinlessness of the One Mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ (I Tim. 2:5); and in Him is no sin (John 3:5); Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth (I Peter 2:22); One that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15); Him Who knew no sin, He made to be sin on our behalf (II Cor. 5:21).”
2. “This teaching contradicts also Sacred Tradition, which is contained in numerous Patristic writings, where there is mentioned the exalted sanctity of the Virgin Mary from Her very birth, as well as Her cleansing by the Spirit at Her conception of Christ, but not at Her own conception by Anna.”
3. “The teaching that the Mother of God was purified before Her birth, so that from Her might be born the Pure Christ, is meaningless; because if the Pure Christ could be born only if the Virgin might be born pure, it would be necessary that Her parents also should be pure of original sin, and they again would have to be born of purified parents, and going further in this way, one would have to come to the conclusion that Christ could not have become incarnate unless all His ancestors in the flesh, right up to Adam inclusive, had been purified beforehand of original sin. But then there would not have been any need for the very Incarnation of Christ, since Christ came down to earth in order to annihilate sin.”
4. “The teaching that the Mother of God was preserved from original sin, as likewise the teaching that She was preserved by God’s grace from personal sins, makes God unmerciful and unjust; because if God could preserve Mary from sin and purify Her before Her birth, then why does He not purify other men before their birth, but rather leaves them in sin?”
5. “This teaching, which seemingly has the aim of exalting the Mother of God, in reality completely denies all Her virtues. After all, if Mary, even in the womb of Her mother, when She could not even desire anything either good or evil, was preserved by God’s grace from every impurity, and then by that grace was preserved from sin even after Her birth, then in what does Her merit consist? If She could have been placed in the state of being unable to sin, and did not sin, then for what did God glorify Her? If She, without any effort, and without having any kind of impulses to sin, remained pure, then why is She crowned more than everyone else. There is no victory without an adversary.”

While I would substantially agree John regarding points 1-3, I tend to disagree with points 4-5.  I don't raise this material to suggest that we should adopt John's view, but rather to emphasize that Russian Orthodoxy (for whom John is a saint) is at least open to a full rejection of the error of the immaculate conception as dogmatized by Rome.

I also wish that what Kimel presents as quotations were provided with a citation.  Since I do not currently have such a citation, I would advise caution.  Another website cited The Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God (link) for substantially the same material.  That booklet may contain the quoted subject matter.

Also, recall that the synodical letter of the Council of Jerusalem of 1672 states:

VI. And the sixth, which includeth all human nature under sin, — not only original sin, as our Church confesseth, but also actual and mortal sin, which floweth out therefrom, and which it calleth the fruits thereof, and doth not exempt from this (mortal sin which procureth for those that commit it condemnation) any; neither him that was greatest among those that have been born of women, nor her that was blessed among women, the blameless and ever-virgin Mary, nor certain Forefathers, Prophets, and Apostles, — is, as being foreign to our faith, condemned. 

(source)

Catherine of Siena contra the Immaculate Conception of Mary

Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) is one of the few female Doctors of the Church in Roman Catholicism.  Suzanne Noffke, O.P. is the editor of a collection of 26 prayers of Catherine of Siena (published by Paulist Press in 1983).  I refer to the translation she provides:

Prayer 16 (lines 10-28)(p. 141):

We are weak because we have received our parents' weak nature. Now parents cannot give their children other than their own, and that nature is inclined to evil because of the rebelliousness of their weak flesh, which they in turn have received from their parents. So our nature is weak and ready for evil evil because we are all descendants and offspring of our first father, Adam, and we have all come from the same clay. Because Adam broke away from you, eternal Father, supreme strength, he became weak. 

Prayer 23 (lines 60-90)(pp. 202-03) 

The eternal Word is given to us through Mary's hands. From Mary's substance he clothed himself in our nature without the stain of original sin-- for that conception was not a man's doing, but the Holy Spirit's. The same was not true of Mary, because she came forth from Adam's clay by a man's doing, not the Holy Spirit's. And since that whole mass was rotten and corrupt, it was impossible to infuse her soul into any but a corrupt material, nor could she be truly cleansed except by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Now the body cannot receive that grace, but only the rational or intellectual spirit. Thus Mary could not be cleansed of that stain except after he soul had been infused into her body-- and this was done out of reverence for the divine Word who would enter that vessel. So, just as a furnace devours a drop of water in a split second, so the Holy Spirit devoured that stain of original sin, for immediately after her conception Mary was cleansed of that sin and given that grace.

Suzanne Noffke points out that Gigli in his edition omitted this section of prayer 23, and that Marracci alleged that this section of the prayer was an addition.  However, Noffke adds that "Marracci's argument is totally without foundation, for the section in question is represented in the earliest manuscripts, long before the edition of 1496 in which he claims the 'addition' was made."(p. 204) She goes on to cite Cavallini as accepting the authenticity of the passage. (p. 205)

Noffke also translated Catherine of Siena's The Dialogue, which was also published by Paulist Press.

Dialogue 14, p. 51

This is why I gave the Word, my only-begotten Son. The clay of humankind was spoiled by the sin of the first man, Adam, and so all of you, as vessels made from that clay, were spoiled and unfit to hold eternal life. So to undo the corruption and death of humankind and to bring you back to the grace you had lost through sin, I, exaltedness, united myself with the baseness of your humanity. For my divine justice demanded suffering in atonement for sin. But I cannot suffer. And you, being only human, cannot make adequate atonement. 

Dialogue 14, p. 52

I really wanted to restore you, incapable as you were of making atonement for yourself. And because you were so utterly handicapped, I sent the Word, my Son, I clothed him with the same nature as yours-- the spoiled clay of Adam-- so that he could suffer in that same nature which had sinned, and by suffering in his body even to the extent of the shameful death on the cross he would placate my anger.

And so I satisfied both my justice and my divine mercy. For my mercy wanted to atone for your sin and make you fit to receive the good for which I had created you. Humanity, when united with divinity, was able to make atonement for the whole human race--not simply through suffering in its finite nature, that is, in the clay of Adam, but by virtue of the eternal divinity, the infinite divine nature. In the union of those two natures I received and accepted the sacrifice of my only-begotten Son's blood, steeped and kneaded with his divinity into the one bread, which the heat of my divine love held nailed to the cross. Thus, was human nature enabled to atone for its sin only by virtue of the human nature.

Dialogue 14, p. 52

Only the scar remains of that original sin as you contract it from your father and mother when you are conceived by them. And even this scar is lifted from the soul--though not completely--in holy baptism, for baptism has power to communicate life of grace in virtue of this glorious and precious blood. 

Notice that the Dialogue, while less explicit than Prayers 16 and 23, but that it provides the conceptual framework upon which Catherine of Siena, a doctor of the Roman Catholic church, denied the error of the immaculate conception, like so many before her.

I am aware that there are some folks out there claiming that Catherine's views from Dialogue 14 and Prayers 14 and 23 are in some way bolstered or reinforced by a purported Marian apparition.  I am not sure from whence they get any such notion.