Oh, forgot the painless Scriptural Messianic prophecy, so I’ll post that first.
Isaiah 66:7 - Before she went into labor, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a male child.
First off, I want to emphasize that the Church doesn’t say Mary experienced no physical signs of pregnancy and childbirth. Obviously, her breasts developed, because she nursed the child. Nobody’s saying her pelvis didn’t alter its shape, or that any of the other physical changes of motherhood didn’t occur.
All right, let’s get on with physical integrity.
First of all, no hymen is totally hermetically sealed, even before the time a girl hits puberty and starts having her period. There’s always a tiny gap for fluid to pass through,that every girl is born with; there’s just not much fluid until you’re having a period. Throughout a girl’s life, both before and after puberty, the gap slowly grows outward. Eventually, even without having sex, it’s going to be nothing but gap, often long before middle age. So maintaining a hymen’s physical integrity throughout life would be a sort of miraculous youth thing (which goes along with the Eden theme). Maintaining it during birth might be a matter of somehow going through the gap, or somehow making the hymen vastly more elastic for a few moments and then putting the gap back to its previous size. But we don’t know.
The usual explanation for Jesus’ ability to pass through was John 20:19, when Jesus got into the room where they were gathered without actually opening the doors or breaking them. (This is the part when us geekier Catholics start invoking the book Flatland, about how a three-dimensional person in a two-dimensional world would seem to have miraculous powers of teleportation, when in fact it’s perfectly natural not to be bound to two dimensions. But of course, Jesus didn’t have to do it that way.) Others preferred to compare the whole thing to “sunlight through clear glass”. But of course, nobody really knows the mechanics; we just know what we’ve been taught happened.
There are some fairly robust statements about this in the tradition, most notably the “Protoevangelium of James.” This fictional text is very very early and includes tons of stuff Christians believed in a novelized form, and this doctrine is no exception. It takes a sort of Doubting Thomas approach with the character of the midwife Salome, and is thus very definite in presenting this doctrine. Ahem.
But generally, the early Christians and medievals didn’t want to get quite this explicit about it, because geez, we’re talking about our mom’s private bits here. They believe it, they state it, but they’re not interested in going into details because it gets a bit salacious and creepy. But physical integrity is what’s taught always. (And of course, St. Luke was a physician and there were Jewish and Greek doctoring traditions involving women practitioners, so he or a female colleague might have been in a position to know for sure.)
The verse that the Church Fathers and Scripture scholars have loved to quote down the ages about the virgin birth is this bit from Ezekiel’s vision of the future perfect Temple:
"Then he brought me back the way of the gate of the outward sanctuary which looks toward the east; and it was shut. Then the LORD said to me, “This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it. Because the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut.” (Ezekiel 44:1-3) This verse is also referred to, partially, by Mary’s title of “Porta Coeli”, gate of heaven.
There’s also Songs 4:12, which talks about “a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up,” but that’s more a general virginity thing.
I could say more, but I think I’ll stop here. It’s not exactly the kind of topic where you can argue apologetics with people about it, or should, because it’s going to encourage some anti-Mary people to really drag her name in the dirt. But of course, after several generations of this sort of “you don’t have to talk about it because people know” approach, combined with modern discomfort for even the most well-known Biblical signs and miracles, a lot of people today haven’t learned about it and don’t know. I hope I haven’t caused anybody difficulties or been too explicit.
So yeah, it’s not wrong to speculate about miracle logistics, and it can be very interesting. But you shouldn’t work too hard on it.
Here’s
a page at EWTN talking about the limits of how far we can be super-definite about the doctrine.
[Here’s a good page](
http://home.earthlink.net/~mysticalrose/virginity(name removed by moderator)artu.htm) talking about various specific patristic references to this doctrine, papal teachings, etc.
