Catholics and Non-Catholics: Do you believe in the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mother?

[Catholic20064]

The proofs we Catholics use to buttress the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary often remind me of the proofs that were used when I was a Mormon to buttress the Book of Mormon. As a Mormon we started from the standpoint of having faith in the Book of Mormon and then used anything we could find to try and prove our faith. It didn’t matter if the proofs held water as long as they could somehow support our belief in the Book of Mormon. I see the same thing happening with regards to the perpetual virginity of Mary. Someone decided 100 years after Mary that she must have been a perpetural virgin – perhaps a reasonable assumption. Unfortunately, there are no reliable witnesses to the original events to offer any proof of her perpetual virginity.

 

[dianaiad]

First of all – you are displaying an abject** ignorance**** history of the Church – and** history.

**The idea that Mary was a consecrated virgin in the Temple is NOT a dogmatic position of the Church. It comes from the 2nd century document, the Protoevangelium of James. Your failure to understand the positions of the Church on Mary – and a number of other positions – stems from your lack of knowledge of the Church. **

Look – you are a Mormon, and you believe that Jesus appeared to the ancient native Americans. WHERE does the Bible claim this? WHERE does the Bible claim that Jesus and Satan are spirit brothers?

In short - you are hardly one to point out where the Catholic Church fails to adhere to Sola Scriptura when your belief system doesn’t. This is NOT a knock on Mormonism but an indictment on your false reasoning.

You may not realize this, but your use of colors and varied fonts for emphasis make it difficult to reply to your posts: remember that the only thing someone responding to you sees in the ‘reply’ box is the code, and it’s really hard to read when all your words are surrounded by

****’ type coding on either side. I know that using all that stuff is fun, and you CAN, of course, use it, (else why would the option be available?) It’s still difficult to read in the response window.

Not to mention that I am irresistably reminded of all those black and red ink pamphlets filled with line drawings and printed on fuzzy paper that the anti (insert belief system) types slip under windshields in the church parking lots.

As to your comment that I am 'displaying an abject ignorance of church history…" that’s rather a nasty ad hominem, don’t you think? Would you care to tell me, why I, as a Mormon, should depend upon Catholic church history to inform MY doctrines, when the entire basis for the existance of the LDS church is the claim that y’all went haring off down the wrong trail very early on?

The point here, as you have so cogently written, is that you are using a double standard. I understand that you do not believe as we do, when the basis for our beliefs are extrabiblical. I’m not the one insisting that you believe that Jesus appeared to ancient Americans, or that you believe that all of us (including Jesus, Lucifer, all the 'fallen angels and you and me) are literally the children of God and thus, in at least one sense, siblings. I’ve never demanded that. As you write, here, you don’t accept the basis for those beliefs as being valid.

Yet you are demanding that I accept, as being valid for me your claims about Mary because YOUR tradition …traditions that we don’t accept as divine revelation and that, by the way, we actually claim to be apostate…says so.

I think that’s a bit of a double standard, don’t you?

So, while you can use your arguments to convince those who share confidence in the correctness of Holy Tradition, you have to use something else with those of us who do not. In my case, if you want to show me why I must believe something, you are stuck with using only those things that both of us consider to be valid sources.

Like…writings previous to the time Catholics declare that public revelation stopped.

In the meantime, I won’t insist that you believe that 'Jesus and Lucifer are brothers," or that Jesus visited the ancient Americas, using BOM verses as prooftexts. Fair enough?**

 

[ERose]

Well…here’s the problem with that approach, Rose.

I don’t know about the standard Protestant approach, but Mormons won’t accept as an authoritative source of Christian doctrine anything written much past the end of the first century. The dividing line would be the death of the last apostle, when Catholics agree that public revelation ceased.

What about the book of Morman? This was written much much latter than the PE of James. Also it should be pointed out that the PE of James is attributed to the Apostle James, and there really is no proof if he did or didn’t write it. Of course the same thing can be said about all of the books of the NT. There is no way to prove or disprove that any of the writings in the NT were written by who it says it is written by except for Christian Tradition. So the same applies.

The claim is, you see, that this is when the church went off the doctrinal rails a bit, and started fooling around with doctrine.

Which you have no proof thereof, except for your traditions.

It’s not that we have problems with extra biblical sources for doctrine…how can we, since we have an open canon?

It’s…OK, would you accept as a prooftext for why YOU must believe a doctrine to be true a quote from the Book of Mormon?

To be honest I am not expecting you to believe or not believe for truly I do not have that power. Only the Holy Spirit can give you that grace. All I can provide you with is my knowledge that is all.

The thing is, I really do understand why CAtholics believe as they do about Mary…I have no problem at all with you using Holy Tradition to show why you believe something, and what you believe. The problem lies in when you use that to somehow show why WE should.

The point I would like to emphasize is that the perpetual virginity of Mary is in Sacred Tradition and is only inferred in the NT. That is problem with Bible-Only believers is that they do not have the proper foundation to accurately understand the unclear verses, so they just guess.

I’m getting there, though…at least, to some understanding of why Catholics believe as they do, though.

Let us keep on traveling.

 

[Todd520]

The point I would like to emphasize is that the perpetual virginity of Mary is in Sacred Tradition and is only inferred in the NT.

ERose, that is the best reply yet to this thread.

 

[KathleenGee]

Dianaid and Todd, the issues you use to bring up why you do not believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary is the same as many others in the Catholic church…Before Lourdes, – and I am not even sure if Lourdes was the momentum for the Church to declare the Immaculate Conception, – her perpetual virginity was debated within the Catholic Church for 1,800 years.

I did not refer to the PE of James, because it cannot be proven.

But there are those of the Cappodician, Eastern tradition more inclined to believing in the perpetual virginity of Mary rather than those of the ascent tradition, a more intellectual type of spirituality and charism such as you find with the Dominicans.

Ironically, the belief in the supernatural creation/conception of Mary came from that part of the Church that is more emotive, more of the heart; The heart is the essence of a person.

About shekels and customs…it was common for girls as well to be consecrated to the temple. But I am not too interested in the details…could ask some of my Hebrew Catholic friends to clarify that one.

But what the Church has been looking at for all this time is the witness of faith by the communion of saints who teach us more in the realm of practice how they encountered Christ and the cross, and how they overcame their difficulties…and there is always a common theme of redemptive suffering.

So my faith in Mary’s perpetual virginity is fortified that she did not turn away from her total consecration to God, I am very familiar and have lived in community with priests, brothers, and nuns and know the witness of the celibate life. Another draw for my faith in Mary’s perpetual virginity comes from my own spiritual growth drawn from the witness of saints and the study of sanctity…which is really Mary’s domain, the model par excellence.

Mary’s domain was her faith and her holiness. Pope, clerics and lay are all on the same level…we are all trying to become better in the Lord. So it is in the study of holiness of the saints that the Church, after much reflection – no quick dogma – declared her perpetual virgin in the 1850’s.

I also would refer people to look up St. Bernadette. You see pictures of her when she first saw Mary…She must have recalled her visitations many times each day. How could she not draw on the spirit of Mary? The beauty of Bernadette came more and more visible. There is a picture of her when she was about 20, most beautiful, and I can see the Virgin Mary’s beauty reflected in her soul.

Bernadette became an incorruptible and her corpus can be seen online. It is in repose in Nevers, France. Her face was darkened and it has wax over it, but the form and intent and spiritual beauty is something that cannot be covered up or misplaced by wax.

The priests said Bernadette never lost her baptismal innocence. And it also implies that Mary can be of great help to us in avoiding sin and growing in Christ and His virtues…that we are not alone but have the company of the communion of saints who pray on our behalf.

I just simply do not grasp how Mormons can say everything ended with the Apostles when from our understanding the Church began with the apostles. The Church was just beginning, and Christ said He would give us the Holy Spirit who would teach us many things.

People are giving their opinion all the time; some of them are quite moving and profound. But the movement of the Holy Spirit is gradual and in tune with every day life…There is wisdom in testing the spirits and seeing if the opinion is a passing movement of air or is indeed a fruit of Christ that is teachable to believers.

So in time, everything falls into sync with the Holy Spirit, opinions and movements come and go, scandals take their losses, but the Lord leads new people into the Church to fill the void …

But again, without celibate friendships or understanding celibate spirituality, it would be hard to understand Mary’s perpetual virginity. I see her as virgin inviolate at the Annunciation and this character of her never changing. I do not have a clear picture of St. Joseph except that he was most chaste and pure and her guardian. I see them having more a transcendent and contemplative relationship in the home, and in public, ordinary like other families…Joseph the Just man…

I do not think Mary was any stranger to suffering either, the Holy Family for that matter.

Dianaid, thanks for taking the time to read St. Ambrose’s piece on modesty.

 

[ERose]

I already went through a year of RCIA (just five years ago) and have read plenty. The whole idea of the perpetual virginity was explained and I accepted it.

All I am recommending to you is get work on your foundation. From your original post it is clear that your foundation is weak and acceptable to heresy. Maybe you should look at what you are reading.

That doesn’t mean it is logical or that it has any scriptural support. A face value reading of the New Testament does everything but support the perpetual virginity of Mary unless you have already decided that that is the way it was.

Why would it have or need support in the NT. That is the problem that you are still dealing with from you previous faith which everything of faith must be in the Bible. As a Catholic you should know that this is not true. The perpetual viginity of our blessed Mother is part of Sacred Tradition of the Church and for it to be true it does not have to be explicitly stated in the Bible. I sent this challenge out before that no one obviously has met but I am going go even further. Prove to me that Mary and Jesus had sex from scripture and provide me one name of a biological child that was Mary’s and where is this name at in the Bible?

The Protoevangelium of James was rejected as scripture – there must have been a good reason to reject it. I just can’t find any justification in early sources to either accept or reject Mary’s perpetual virginity.

Why would it be scripture? The writings that were eventually consolidated into the NT were focused on being about Jesus and Jesus’ message and the early church. But there are many writings that are accepted as true and good reading that are not scripture. The PE of James is one of them.

About all you can do is accept it on faith because the arguments don’t wash. But is faith in the Marian doctrines required for our salvation? Seems a tough argument to go that far.

Again give me an argument or proof that what the Church teaches is not true. Do it from scripture or the church fathers I do not care. But concerning the Marian doctrines being necessary for salvation. Most probably not necessary but extremely helpful to get to heaven. I do not think that it is a good idea to disgrace the Mother of our Lord. That may be a tough one to explain when standing before His judgement seat.

I like the answer of one poster that says we are only required to believe in the Nicene Creed.

And that one poster is wrong and you would be wrong. Does the Creed talk about the Holy Eucharist? Does it talk about keeping the Commandments. Does it talk about Confession? The list can go on and on. The Nicene creed was never meant to be an all inclusive creed of all Dogma and trying to make it so will lead to a dangereous path.

 

[dianaiad]

I was asking this in response to the notion that everything must be explicitly explained by Scripture. That is that problem with Protestantism and the false** doctrine of Sola Scriptura.**

Were you aware that, in the reply window, your quote contains more code than text? This makes it hard to separate the points you are making from all the brackets, slashes and code commands.

Ok…you are aware that Mormons are not sola scripturians, right? This isn’t an issue of 'if it ain’t in the bible, it ain’t so." It IS an issue of using sources that both parties to the conversation accept as valid. Just as you would not accept me using the Doctrine and Covenants to prove one of our doctrines to be Truth, it’s not logical for you to insist that I accept a Tradition that my beliefs specifically tell me are…more or less…apostate as a source for Truth. We are both confined to those things we agree are valid. I’ll take anything written before that period of time that Catholics claim public revelation ceased. I’ll take valid sociological information about the culture of the time. I’ll take a lot of things—but don’t ask me to accept, as valid, the very teachings and writings that we claim are heretical/apostate.

…in return, I won’t ask you to accept the Pearl of Great Price as an authoritative source of gospel truth.

<snip remainder of your post, for space only…did you know that they count code commands as ‘characters,’ for the purpose of determining how long a post can be? I didn’t either, until now!

So…your position is that we modern readers of scripture are actually eavesdroppers, of a sort, and cannot then make determinations regarding the subjects they address using the words they write, since we are not the intended recipients?

Sort of begs the question of why they were written, that position, especially the gospels…but leave that for now.

If this is so, then why are your conclusions about what they mean any better than mine, especially since you seem to be the one who is making all the assumptions regarding what those words mean?

Remember, I’m not utterly throwing out the idea that Mary could have remaind a virgin all her life. My point is that the scriptures do not really support the idea that she was. Please note; I use words like 'probably, and possibly…" because nothing that we have from those early days is absolutely difinitive…but because of what the scriptures do not say, and because of the cutlure of the time, the probabilities lean a lot further to Mary having been fully a wife to Joseph rather than not.

…and there is nothing I can see that would make her being fully a wife to Joseph (and thus being in full obedience to the Law of Moses, which was still very much in play during most of her life time) would mean that she was NOT worthy of being Jesus’ mother. Or that Jesus’ Atonment is ain any way lessened…or even affected.

In fact, I wonder how Jesus could have been really ‘fully human,’ if He wasn’t raised in a fully observant and religious household. I don’t think that He was raised in a bubble; it’s just my opinion, of course, but there was a reason God had His Son be born an infant, and learn, and grow ‘from grace to grace,’ as a human child does. Wasn’t part of that reason to experience the full range of human, mortal experience? Wouldn’t that, in those days, have included, well, siblings? (just a passing thought…)

 

[dianaiad]

Jeez! maybe they knew their neighbors? I can’t imagine them not being liked by their peeps.
This is the lamest scriptural reference yet for PV

I dunno, Todd, I rather liked it.

Doesn’t prove anything, but it was new–and thoughtful!

 

[dianaiad]

The proofs we Catholics use to buttress the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary often remind me of the proofs that were used when I was a Mormon to buttress the Book of Mormon. As a Mormon we started from the standpoint of having faith in the Book of Mormon and then used anything we could find to try and prove our faith. It didn’t matter if the proofs held water as long as they could somehow support our belief in the Book of Mormon. I see the same thing happening with regards to the perpetual virginity of Mary. Someone decided 100 years after Mary that she must have been a perpetural virgin – perhaps a reasonable assumption. Unfortunately, there are no reliable witnesses to the original events to offer any proof of her perpetual virginity.

You are both right…and wrong.

When it comes to the Book of Mormon, the whole thing comes down to Moroni’s challenge. Remember? Go ask God and see what HE has to say about this?

In all the discussion regarding Mary being a perpetual virgin, have you seen any Catholic say 'go pray about it and see what the Holy Spirit has to say about the validity of our sources?"

That, to me, is rather important.

 

[ERose]

The proofs we Catholics use to buttress the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary often remind me of the proofs that were used when I was a Mormon to buttress the Book of Mormon. As a Mormon we started from the standpoint of having faith in the Book of Mormon and then used anything we could find to try and prove our faith. It didn’t matter if the proofs held water as long as they could somehow support our belief in the Book of Mormon. I see the same thing happening with regards to the perpetual virginity of Mary. Someone decided 100 years after Mary that she must have been a perpetural virgin – perhaps a reasonable assumption. Unfortunately, there are no reliable witnesses to the original events to offer any proof of her perpetual virginity.

Here is the way you need to look at this. One why is it us that must prove this belief? This belief is older than the protestant or mormon churches. If these churches want to come on board and say that there is something that the Catholic Church teaches that is not true then it is up to them to prove it. YOU OR THEY HAVE NO PROOF WHATSOEVER THAT MARY AND JOSEPH HAD SEX AFTER THE BIRTH OF JESUS NOR DO YOU HAVE PROOF THAT THEY HAD ANY CHILDREN BESIDES JESUS. UNTIL YOU OR THEY PROVIDE PROOF FROM THE BIBLE THAT THEY HAD SEX OR CHILDREN THEN YOU AND THEY HAVE NOTHING. NO ARGUMENTS AND NO PROOF. SHOW IT AND WE WILL DISCUSS IT.

 

[KathleenGee]

ERose has alot of validity here.

The Holy Family lived the hidden life.

 

[ERose]

You are both right…and wrong.

When it comes to the Book of Mormon, the whole thing comes down to Moroni’s challenge. Remember? Go ask God and see what HE has to say about this?

In all the discussion regarding Mary being a perpetual virgin, have you seen any Catholic say 'go pray about it and see what the Holy Spirit has to say about the validity of our sources?"

That, to me, is rather important.

So because I prayed to God to tell me if the Book of Mormon is legit and He told me no. So the Book of Mormon is not legitimate. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

 

[dianaiad]

What about the book of Morman? This was written much much latter than the PE of James.

The operative phrase is ‘public revelation,’ Rose.

We believe that the Book of Mormon is the direct result of divine, and public, revelation of the sort that Catholics claim ceased with the last apostle.

Even so, I don’t expect YOU to accept it as prooftext for anything!

Also it should be pointed out that the PE of James is attributed to the Apostle James, and there really is no proof if he did or didn’t write it. Of course the same thing can be said about all of the books of the NT. There is no way to prove or disprove that any of the writings in the NT were written by who it says it is written by except for Christian Tradition. So the same applies.

However, it seems that we both accept it as authoritative, right? Since we do, we can use it.

Which you have no proof thereof, except for your traditions.

We think we do…but then you believe you have proof that it did not. The point is, I’m not asking you to believe that it did --but y’all are demanding that we accept that those very writings we believe to be erronious be used to inform our beliefs.

Every time someone gets indignant and posts the writings of someone who lived in 300 AD as absolute proof for something that I must accept, or be catagorized as ‘utterly ignorant,’ I am truly tempted to start inserting BoM quotes, Doctrine and Covenant quotes, and General Conference speeches as absolute reasons why the writer must accept our viewpoints. I know exactly how much trouble that would get me into…

To be honest I am not expecting you to believe or not believe for truly I do not have that power. Only the Holy Spirit can give you that grace. All I can provide you with is my knowledge that is all.

The point I would like to emphasize is that the perpetual virginity of Mary is in Sacred Tradition and is only inferred in the NT. That is problem with Bible-Only believers is that they do not have the proper foundation to accurately understand the unclear verses, so they just guess.

Let us keep on traveling.

OK…I not only accept, but honor, that. The question then is—why should a sola scripturian (or me, for that matter) accept Sacred Tradition as being a valid source of doctrine, and how are we supposed to do that?

 

[dianaiad]

Dianaid and Todd, the issues you use to bring up why you do not believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary is the same as many others in the Catholic church…Before Lourdes, – and I am not even sure if Lourdes was the momentum for the Church to declare the Immaculate Conception, – her perpetual virginity was debated within the Catholic Church for 1,800 years…

Thank you, Kathleen, that was a truly lovely testimony of your own faith.

 

[dianaiad]

Here is the way you need to look at this. One why is it us that must prove this belief? This belief is older than the protestant or mormon churches. If these churches want to come on board and say that there is something that the Catholic Church teaches that is not true then it is up to them to prove it. YOU OR THEY HAVE NO PROOF WHATSOEVER THAT MARY AND JOSEPH HAD SEX AFTER THE BIRTH OF JESUS NOR DO YOU HAVE PROOF THAT THEY HAD ANY CHILDREN BESIDES JESUS. UNTIL YOU OR THEY PROVIDE PROOF FROM THE BIBLE THAT THEY HAD SEX OR CHILDREN THEN YOU AND THEY HAVE NOTHING. NO ARGUMENTS AND NO PROOF. SHOW IT AND WE WILL DISCUSS IT.

Actually, Rose, it’s the other way around. It’s not possible to prove a negative, y’know.

Remember, the fact that 'this belief is older than both Protestant and Mormon churches" means nothing…the entire existance of both beliefs is the result of the claim that the beliefs that were around all that long were, well, wrong.

Protestants claimed that the church needed reforming…brought back to the pure and early beliefs that they thought Catholicism had strayed from, and Mormons went a step further; we claimed that the Church of Jesus Christ had to actually be restored, not simply reformed.

The whole premise behind both claims is that…it doesn’t really matter how long those beliefs were held, if those beliefs were wrong.

In that case, then, the burden of proof is on the claimant, and the claim is that Mary–in spite of the fact that she was a married woman subject to all the laws and customs of her time, virtuous and faithful to her beliefs, would NOT have been fully a wife to Joseph, absent any evidence at all that she remained a virgin. It is the extraordinary claim that requires proof, not the assumption of 'what usually happens."

That would mean…well…you know what that means.

 

[KathleenGee]

Again, Dianaid, to be the mother of the messiah is a singular vocation…none other like it before or after…

 

[dianaiad]

ERose has alot of validity here.

The Holy Family lived the hidden life.

“hidden” as in…we don’t know?

Then how can we make any assumptions regarding that life…one way or the other?

 

[dianaiad]

So because I prayed to God to tell me if the Book of Mormon is legit and He told me no. So the Book of Mormon is not legitimate. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

There are a whole bunch of reasons why you got the answer you did. Because I got the ‘yes, it’s true,’ answer…which one of us is correct about it?

I have my thoughts about why we got two different answers…that do not, by the way, automatically assume that there is something wrong with you.

The question remains: without the witness of the Holy Ghost, directly asked for, why in the world would anybody put faith in any religious thing? In that, I’m afraid, I side with atheists; religion isn’t logical…and evidence for its truth can’t be found in empirical data.

 

[dianaiad]

Again, Dianaid, to be the mother of the messiah is a singular vocation…none other like it before or after…

I agree with that.

The problem lies in all the things that mere people insist that she MUST be in order to fulfill that role.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

The problem is, dianaiad, that being a Mormon, your beliefs about the very nature of God, salvation, church history, and being in general are so radically out in left field of Catholicism, that you can’t agree on any of these dogmas let alone most of the basics of being a Christian. Mormon thinking on just about everything is in a complete other world. So I’m not sure if there’s even a point to you arguing about these Marian issues? Most Protestants and Catholics find the debate helpful or at least clarifying or edifying to some degree, but for a Mormon, I don’t see a point in even looking at this stuff at all?

You don’t believe in the Catholic Church’s authority, the councils, the same baptism, the same priesthood, the communion of saints, the Sacraments, the Trinity, the Father in the same way we do let alone Christ the same way we do. Your view of history and theology is completely a 180. And I ask this with all due respect, why do you concern yourself about these issues or discuss them when you’re a Mormon?

I’m a cradle Catholic turned Anglican in my early 20’s. I’ve been floating between the two for several years now wanting to settle in a home and find the Truth. I believe in these Marian dogmas yet am not sure why they’re mandatory. I enjoy hearing Catholic views of this to help me understand my compass where I belong. I’m open to becoming 100% Catholic again or going and staying Anglican. Respectfully, how does this argument aid your walk with Christ? Why would a Mormon bother to enter this discussion? Of course you have every right to do so and I hope for the best for you but I’m just not sure why you’re betting money when you don’t have a pony in this race?

I agree with that.

The problem lies in all the things that mere people insist that she MUST be in order to fulfill that role.