Mary as the Ark?..The Ark was the center of worship, where sacrifices were made. Mary is never portrayed as such, and frankly it would be idolatrous to so regard her as the Tabernacle as it was in the desert.
What did the Ark carry? The Word of God.
What did Mary carry? The Word incarnate.
Unless you are claiming that the Ark did not carry the word of God or that Mary did not carry the word, the typology of Mary and the Ark cannot be dismissed so easily.
As for making a claim about idolatry, you are off base, unless, again, you are claiming that the Israelites worshipped the Ark, committing idolatry, rather than the Ark residing at the center of where they worshipped the One true God.
The implication is that somehow Mary would have been defiled by sexual activity, hence she must have remained a virgin. I’m saying sexual activity is not necessarily sinful. Jesus lay in a manger - not exactly a holy place, either before He lay there or afterwards - when the animals ate from it. What sanctified it was His presence. Animals that dared eat from it afterwards did not immediately die.
No, that is only the implication from those who don’t understand.
Mary remained a virgin not because she would be defiled, but because Christ was so Holy. Just as men were struck dead for even accidently touching the Ark which carried the Word of God, Joseph would have been struck dead for intimately touching that where the Word resided for 9 months.
As for the manger, that is beautiful imagery. What did Christ come for? One must eat the Lamb. And Christ’s first bed, was an eating trough. And why would the animals die? Besides the fact that Christ came to be our food, again, you are comparing the intimacy of a child residing in a mother’s womb with a simple chair, crib or manger. No comparision whatsoever.
You are taking your eyes off Christ. This is about Christ, less so about Mary.
Ok. I am dense. There is a difference between a womb and a chair. Or a bed a child sleeps in. Or a shirt he wears continually.
Yet you keep trying to use the same argument.
But what it is it that is so compelling restrictive about the womb that makes it mandatory that no other child could have occupied it, that the approach of Joseph would have defiled Mary, if not that sex is somehow inherently sinful, even between a godly man and his godly wife?
This is not about defilement. That is your mistaken view of Why Catholics teach it, not the Catholic teaching. Please, read these words. Thinking sex is inherently sinful is YOUR mistaken belief and is*** not*** part of Catholic teaching.
That and the typology of scripture. It makes as much sense to rail at God as to why the Ark would be defiled by a man accidently touching it that he was struck dead. Why did God strike the man dead for just acciently bumping into the Ark of the Covenant? Did the man defile the ark by accidently touching it? Or was there some other reason having to do with holiness of that which He touched?
Total depravity is not what you think it is. I think we’ve been over that ground before.
Respectfully, I have been told on these forums that total depravity really is just that, even though James Akin seems to try to say otherwise. Since I do not look to non-Catholic sources to teach definitively about Catholic doctrine, I must bow to those who are Baptists and say that Akin is wrong, Total really does mean total.
At least for some
Paul did not think marriage was sinful. Neither has the Church taught it. But it has, especially in monasticism, emphasized virginity as a virtue far above anything achievable in a married state. One can be a lay Catholic and trudge along in the trenches. But the spiritually superior, the elite, are chaste. If you really want to advance in the Catholic Church you cannot marry. Priests, deacons, nuns, monks are all single. What message does that send about the sinfulness of sex? And this ties in directly to the contradictory message that Mary was both married and a lifelong virgin.
No message at all unless you are claiming that Paul thought/taught that sex is sinful. Scripture tells us that it is BEST to serve God unmarried. Unless you are going to say that scripture is teaching about the sinfulness of sex, you can’t say the Catholic Church is teaching that message.
Maybe I should throw in Psalms 69:8 about now. In this prophecy Jesus was deserted by His mother’s sons
I would be glad to discuss this
. I have never heard in any of the Protestant Bible studies I was in that this was claimed to be prophecy about Christ.
Is there a book/source for this? I would be interested in discussing/looking into this more.
God Bless,
Maria
). What the Church teaches and what people in the Church teach are two different things, if not more. Official Church teaching is that sex is good; practice is that it should be avoided, if the example of the leaders is that they should lead by example.