grandfather;8893644:
You have a point. However, that is not the only possible reaction. When you examine how Mary responded (“How can this be since I do not know a man?”), you can see that she understood the angel’s announcement to mean she would conceive before she would “know” Joseph. She was like saying, “How can I conceive when I am still [at this present time] a virgin?”
Now, why not examine your position where an engaged Mary was not expecting to have children because of a vow of perpetual virginity? What would be her natural reaction to an angel’s announcement that she would conceive? Would she say, “How can this be since I do not know a man?” Of course, not. Her normal natural reaction would be to say, “How can this be when I will remain a virgin?” Or, “How can this be since I will not know my husband?”
What you are postulating here is that there were no plans to consummate the marriage in sexual union from the very beginning because Mary had a vow of perpetual virginity. But that is not what the Scriptures record. Notice: “When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together, she was found with child
of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. 1:18).
Were they going to “come together?” That’s what it says on that Scripture. However,
before they came together, Mary was already found with child.
I suggest you read all the objections and replies. Concern reply 5, it is good rebuttal but we can prove it undeniable, by scripture alone, that the “brothers and sister” were of other mothers.
Summa Theologica III, 24, a3
Objection 1. It would seem that Christ’s Mother did not remain a virgin after His Birth. For it is written (Matthew 1:18): “Before Joseph and Mary came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.” Now the Evangelist would not have said this–“before they came together”–unless he were certain of their subsequent coming together; for no one says of one who does not eventually dine “before he dines” (cf. Jerome, Contra Helvid.). It seems, therefore, that the Blessed Virgin subsequently had intercourse with Joseph; and consequently that she did not remain a virgin after (Christ’s) Birth.
On the contrary, It is written (Ezekiel 44:2): “This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it; because the Lord the God of Israel hath entered in by it.” Expounding these words, Augustine says in a sermon (De Annunt. Dom. iii): “What means this closed gate in the House of the Lord, except that Mary is to be ever inviolate? What does it mean that ‘no man shall pass through it,’ save that Joseph shall not know her? And what is this–‘The Lord alone enters in and goeth out by it’–except that the Holy Ghost shall impregnate her, and that the Lord of angels shall be born of her? And what means this–‘it shall be shut for evermore’–but that Mary is a virgin before His Birth, a virgin in His Birth, and a virgin after His Birth?”
I answer that, Without any hesitation we must abhor the error of Helvidius, who dared to assert that Christ’s Mother, after His Birth, was carnally known by Joseph, and bore other children. For, in the first place, this is derogatory to Christ’s perfection: for as He is in His Godhead the Only-Begotten of the Father, being thus His Son in every respect perfect, so it was becoming that He should be the Only-begotten son of His Mother, as being her perfect offspring.
Secondly, this error is an insult to the Holy Ghost, whose “shrine” was the virginal womb “Sacrarium Spiritus Sancti” (Office of B. M. V., Ant. ad Benedictus, T. P.), wherein He had formed the flesh of Christ: wherefore it was unbecoming that it should be desecrated by intercourse with man.
Thirdly, this is derogatory to the dignity and holiness of God’s Mother: for thus she would seem to be most ungrateful, were she not content with such a Son; and were she, of her own accord, by carnal intercourse to forfeit that virginity which had been miraculously preserved in her.
Fourthly, it would be tantamount to an imputation of extreme presumption in Joseph, to assume that he attempted to violate her whom by the angel’s revelation he knew to have conceived by the Holy Ghost.
We must therefore simply assert that the Mother of God, as she was a virgin in conceiving Him and a virgin in giving Him birth, did she remain a virgin ever afterwards.
Reply to Objection 1. As Jerome says (Contra Helvid. i): “Although this particle ‘before’ often indicates a subsequent event, yet we must observe that it not infrequently points merely to some thing previously in the mind: nor is there need that what was in the mind take place eventually, since something may occur to prevent its happening. Thus if a man say: ‘Before I dined in the port, I set sail,’ we do not understand him to have dined in port after he set sail: but that his mind was set on dining in port.” In like manner the evangelist says: “Before they came together” Mary “was found with child, of the Holy Ghost,” not that they came together afterwards: but that, when it seemed that they would come together, this was forestalled through her conceiving by the Holy Ghost, the result being that afterwards they did not come together.
Oh – and the explicit mention that Joseph named him Jesus is relevant, too… the legal father of a child had the right to name the child (take a look at the story of John the Baptist’s birth). So, Matthew is saying both that Joseph was not Jesus’ natural father and that Joseph was his (adoptive / legal) father – in other words, there was no other man in the picture who could claim (human) fatherhood…
Wow…