raumzeitmc2:
Is it possible for you to answer a question with a direct response?
marietta
Yes!
Now in regard to this statement of St. Paul,
“Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer.” 1 Cor 7:5
I asked the following:
In what way do lawful sexual relations in marriage interfere with prayer?
How long is “for a time?”
And whoever taught that sex was “dirty”???
Let me now modify and clarify my last question.
What
Christian believes that sex, *in the context of the primary purpose for which it was intended *i.e., the begetting children, is sinful or dirty?
It’s a straightforward question. But to tell you the truth, I’m not as concerned about an answer to it as I am about an answer to my first two questions. You see, I don’t think a satisfactory answer can be given regarding Mary’s perpetual virginity unless first, one understands and appreciates the idea of
marital chastity, or
marital continence.
And are you aware of how fiercely the reformers railed against chastity, both within and without marriage?
Listen to Erasmus replying to Luther. Erasmus writes (pay special attention to the last sentence):
But we say that what is better is what agrees with the teachings of the Church; you say it is what makes for your teachings. Who can settle the dispute here about which side chooses better? But this is the question posed by my comparison, to which as yet you have given no response, nor is it likely that you ever will. It seems that up to now you have not ranted and raved enough against the most approved Doctors of the Church unless you accuse St. Jerome of impiety, sacrilege, and blasphemy because he wrote, “ virginity fills up heaven; marriage, the earth.”{611}
Clearly, impious, sacrilegious, and blasphemous, as you have perverted it! ‘As if,’ you say, ‘patriarchs, apostles, and Christian spouses were entitled to earth, not to heaven, or as if pagan vestal virgins without Christ were entitled to heaven.’ {612}
How shamelessly you distort it! Was Jerome talking there about virginity which is celibate without Christ? Was he so crazy that he would promise heaven to such persons? Again, does he exclude the patriarchs from heaven because they had wives? What, then, is he saying? He sets holy virginity above holy marriage because marriage was instituted so that the human race might grow and be propagated, according to the command ‘Increase and multiply and fill the earth.’ {613}
Virginity, however, although it does not increase the number of people on earth, nevertheless, by teaching and by the greatest purity of life draws people to heaven and begets them, as it were, for heaven. Hence the Lord calls blessed those who make themselves eunuchs because of the Kingdom of God. {614} Of this number were the apostles: just as we read that some of them had wives, {615}we also do not read that after undertaking the business of the gospel they made use of their wives. {616}
Erasmus,
Hyperaspistes, Book I, Works, vol. 76, p. 210
Controversies, Desiderius Erasmus, Charles Trinkaus, Jesse Kelley Sowards, Peter Macardle, Clarence H. Miller, Nelson H. Minnich, Translated by Peter Macardle, Clarence H. Miller, University of Toronto Press, 1993
ISBN 0802043178, 9780802043177
amazon.com/Controversies-arbitrio-Hyperaspistes-Collected-Erasmus/dp/0802043178
Notes:
- Ep 22.19 CSEL 54, 168; see n90 above.
- De servo arbitrio WA 18, 649:17-21 / LW 33:84
- Gen. 1:28
- Matt. 19: 11-12
- The Gospels record that Christ cured Peter’s mother-in-law; Matt. 8:14-15 (Mark 1:30-1, Luke 4:38-9).
- Erasmus’ phrasing is careful: ‘we do not read that they made’ is quite different from ‘we read that they did not make.’
And how different the teachings of the reformers from those of the Fathers! Listen to St. Augustine:
So is marriage to be condemned? No, marriage is not to be condemned…When he had been living as a licentious young man, marriage lay ahead of him…but once he had chosen celibacy, marriage is behind him…
…Let married people put the unmarried above themselves; let them acknowledge that they are better; let them respect in them what they do not have in themselves; and in them let them love Christ.
St. Augustine, Sermon 96:10, Works, vol.3, part 4, p. 34. ISBN1565480007
amazon.com/Sermons-94a-150-Works-Saint-Augustine/dp/1565480007
Now we don’t want anything to do with her… we want to put her away FOR OBVIOUSLY she was with another Man, we think… but then we have a dream and angel came to us and told us not to be affraid to take Mary as Wife, for Mary has concieved by the Power of the Holy Spirit and will have the Savior of the World…we all would be in AWE of MARY as was Elizabeth and the child John in her womb… I tell you right there and then we would know our ROLE… If we wanted to put her away for thinking she was with another man… Now Joseph finding out that the Child True Father was The HOLY SPIRIT the TRUE SPOUSE of Mary he would never have intercourse with her… Would YOU? …NO WE WOULD NOT …DEFINITELY WE WOULD KNOW OUR ROLE AS JOSEPH DID. Common sense should tell us all this.
