The dogma [of Mary’s perpetual virginity] merely asserts the factof Mary’s physical virginity without determining more closely how this is to be physiologically explained. In general the Fathers and the Schoolmen
St. Thomas Aquinas] conceived it as non-injury to the hymen, and accordingly taught that Mary gave birth in miraculous fashion without opening of the womb and injury to the hymen, and consequently also without pains (cf.
ST III:28:2).
However, according to modern natural scientific knowledge, the purely physical side of virginity consists in the non-fulfillment of the sex act … and in the non-contact of the female egg by the male seed… Thus, injury to the hymen in birth does not destroy virginity, while, on the other hand, its rupture seems to belong to complete natural motherhood. It follows from this that from the concept of virginity alone the miraculous character of the process of birth cannot be inferred, if it cannot be and must not be derived from other facts of [divine] revelation. Holy writ attests Mary’s active role in the act of birth (
Matt. 1:25,
Luke 2:7: “She brought forth”) which does not seem to indicate a miraculous process.
But the Fathers, with few exceptions, vouch for the miraculous character of the birth. However, the question is whether in doing so they attest a truth of [divine] revelation or whether they wrongly interpret a truth of revelation, that is, Mary’s virginity, from an inadequate natural scientific point of view. It seems hardly possible to demonstrate that the dignity of the Son of God or the dignity of the Mother of God demands a miraculous birth.
