How do you know that Mary had stayed a virgin?

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The perpetual virginity of Mary is one of the oldest attested to doctrines of the Church, that is, we have very early written testimony from Patristic sources, who themselves obtained these teachings from apostolic times. The Church was also entrusted with the authority by God to interpret both scriptural and apostolic tradition and teach on the essentials of the faith. We believe in this because the Church teaches it, and they teach it because it’s the teaching that’s been handed down to us.
 
Catholic Answers has prepared at least two tracts on the topic, Mary: Ever Virgin and The Case for Mary’s Perpetual Virginity. Those two pieces are not difficult reading, but they go into far more depth than any of us could do here.
 
The gospel of Luke says she is a virgin. Matthew is ambiguous because he just says that Mary and Joseph had not been together and her child was of the Holy Ghost, a new concept in the Bible. (God’s spirit and human spirit are mentioned in the OT [Gen 1 2, Gen 6 3, Mal 2 15] but the expression Holy Ghost is new.) Mark and John don’t mention it at all.

Even if one of the gospels says Mary was a virgin it is true.
 
Faith has no reason. Neither did the original sin - why risk Heaven? So one good thing without reason will.fight off the other one.
Mary’s unproven and yet true virginity is one of the proofs of God leading her to defeat the snake of doubt.
God bless and Merry Christmas!
 
For these reasons I know she stayed a virgin

I know because her entire life on earth was bound to heaven

.Heaven revealed her to the first age at the dawn of time.

She entered into life a heavenly conception.

Heaven commended her to the ages to come with dignity above all others.

She lived a life with God bound in the intimacy of maternal love. God united Himself to her in the most intimate bond natural to earthly life.

Her purpose was more profoundly interwoven than any other with the saving work of God on earth., Her life on earth ended taken up to heaven.

When the purpose of a life on earth is so profoundly bound to heaven there is no urge to satisfy an earthly purpose. The urge to reproduce did not exist in Our Blessed Mother. Her body Incarnated God. The meaning and purpose of her maternity was fulfilled in that purpose from heaven.

Our Lady lived a heavenly life on earth. Heavenly life doesn’t have the need to reproduce.
 
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How do we know George chopped the cherry tree and copped to it? How do we know that Benjamin “discovered” electricity? How do we know that Michelangelo painted anything at all?

Removed from any history, most things we hold as historical facts are devoid of truth.

Scriptures speak of the Virgin having one son; nowhere is there an explicit, ‘son/daughter of Mary, mother of Jesus.’ Conversely, there are very many cases where Israelites are said to be blood relations (brothers) but evidence demonstrate that there is no blood relations.

Consider also the language–there has never been a single “scholar” that has proven that “cousin” or “uncle” or “ant” were widely used in the Hebrew vernacular.

…which brings us back to historical understanding–none of Jesus’ Followers ever claimed to know any person that was born of the Virgin Mary and the early Church, collectively, speaks of the Virgin as remaining without other children…

Now, just to play advocate, can you demonstrate where it is expressed that any person other than Jesus was born of the Virgin’s womb?

Maran atha!

Angel
 
Hi, a new concept?

How about ‘the Way?’

Just because we do not have extensive coverage of a news event it does not mean that it did not happen (as in Catholics and other Christians being murdered and oppressed consistently in many parts of the world).

Look at Scriptures to find out how new the “concept” was:

‘all sins will be forgiven of man, except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which shall not be forgiven in this life nor the next!’

Maran atha!

Angel
 
A great book to read is The Life of the Virgin by Saint Maximus the Confessor, it goes into great detail regarding the Theotokos and everything surrounding her life as passed down through the oral tradition of our Holy Fathers. I recall reading just last night about this very subject within the book in which Mary 's virginity was immaculately consecrated and she held an extreme love of her virginity.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about Christ and his mother, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary.
 
Because she did. I don’t know why it’s so hard to believe that someone can’t stay a virgin. Well, maybe in this day in age that might be hard to believe. But our lady did.
 
DaddyGirl said:
The evidence being, of course, that she had other children who were mentioned in the Christian canon.
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You’ve got a Scripture quotation calling someone (other than Jesus) the “son of Mary”? Really?!? 😮 😉
Not so old, really. The doctrine took three or four centuries to be established, did it not?
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To be fair, they had bigger fish to fry: besides being persecuted, they were still debating what it meant for Jesus to be ‘human’ and what it meant for God to be ‘Trinity’. 😉
And some early, well-respected “church fathers” disagreed with this belief.
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Just curious what it is that you’re referring to…? Do you have a citation we can look up?
 
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The earliest written record is The Protoevangelium of James which speaks of her virginity. Origen, and others wrote about her virginity. Scripture shows that Jesus was her only child. He gave her to John to protect only if He had no siblings would this have been necessary. It is shown that the brothers mentioned by name had other mothers. Brothers and sisters had a wide meaning not just siblings. The evidence is overwhelming that Jesus was her only child.
 

This video helped me (although may be basic for some this was right on my level).

The girl in it Lizzie is technically still a protestant at the moment but I think she is currently converting into Eastern Orthodoxy or Catholicism and so has a few more of these types of videos on her channel (videos dealing with sola scriptura, faith alone salvation, etc)
 
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