Mary, and Jesus’ Birth

[BlackFriar]

I think it is important, in defining motherhood and humanity, to involve the whole process of gestation, “of being borne” as well - rather than over emphasising certain more momentous “show pony” events…be that preserved signs of virginity or simply the mere fact of natural birth indicating “full humanity”.
God respected all that it means to be human following the slow, weak, humble, inherent teleology of lowly matter developing under the gentle act of a truly human soul with the cooperation of a human mother from the conceptus to a birthed child.
It would have been just as incongruent and less than human had Jesus appeared full formed in the womb after the annunciation and then birthed.

Likewise with those fables that had Jesus talking Aramaic from the womb, his words only childish/jibberish by reason of an unformed hard palate.

I have always remembered a priest I knew many years ago whom I noticed had slightly modified the prayer of absolution to better match the oremus prayer at the end of the Rosary.

He always started, “God the Father of mercies, through the life, death and resurrection of His Son…”
This I in time realised well counters the temptation that some more mechanistic theologies have of thinking that salvation was wrought simply by the suffering/death of the God-Man in some warped St Anselm type satisfaction accounting where His life of teaching, his solidarity, his job, his healings, his calling disciples, his walking among men really paid no essential part in the formation of the Church and the Reconciliation his life brought about. Its almost as if God could equally have miraculously created Jesus as an adult and had him killed somehow a few hours later in anonymity somewhere and the human race would equally have been saved. To be human surely everything about the human condition from conception to death must be subject to the same weak, fraught, material causal processes.

That does raise an issue of whether there is place for anything biologically miraculous in the life of Jesus including his Resurrection and Conception. Does the biologically miraculous inherently deny Jesus’s humanity … and if not why not?

Does Jesus’s divinity necessitate the absence of a human father? Probably not.
It appears simply a well attested fact from the NT itself that Jesus actually had no biological father.

These are thorny questions, but these “terminal miracles” I suggest are quite different in nature from that we have been discussing re the Virginal birth.
But that is perhaps another discussion for another thread.

 

[BlackFriar]

As FrDavid has explained, it appears Catholics do not have to de fide believe such “miracles” as you allege took place at all. Nor are you in error for choosing to believe in such unlikely biological happenings.

 

[Mintaka]

I still don’t understand why people are having such a hard time with this. If you are willing to say that God Himself became a single-celled zygote in a woman’s womb, and that angels came to sing at His Birth, why the heck is it stunning to think that His mother could give birth to Him miraculously and painlessly?

Seriously, folks, this is the classic example of swallowing an elephant but straining at a flea.

But yes, there are a thousand zillion ways that the Virgin Birth is important to fulfilling Biblical prophecy, most of them dealing with the theme of Bethlehem and Nazareth as a brand new version of Eden.

In Eden, Adam lay down “in a deep sleep” one day, and God painlessly produced a woman from his side. In Bethlehem, the New Eve lay down but stayed awake, and God painlessly produced the New Adam from her. (On the other side of the story, where Adam is molded from earth, the Fathers loved to point out that the immaculate Mary constituted “virgin earth.”)

I don’t particularly care whether or not Jesus passed miraculously through her side or her birth canal. But tradition and doctrine has always said that the hymen “gate” remained closed, and that’s not particularly strange in a miraculous situation.

 

[Mintaka]

(Breaking up my reply)

As for how the early Church could know – well, of course one hopes there was no unfortunate midwife Salome. (Although a withered hand that is quickly healed is not nearly as severe as getting zapped dead for touching the Ark of the Covenant, which is in the Bible.)

But we do know that the evangelist Luke was trusted with Mary’s story by her; and St. Luke was a physician by trade. He may have been her regular doctor for some years, for all we know. Gynecological examination was a part of physicals in the ancient world, and he would have been trained to do it.

Naturally he wouldn’t have written a report about it in his Gospel, because that would be a violation of his professional ethics. But it was standard for women in the ancient world, just like many women today, to bring along company when being examined; and the doctor would also have assistants, or sometimes students to observe patients and learn from what the doctor did. (Who wouldn’t want to show his medical students a perfect unfallen woman as an example of what humans should be? Or for that matter, a middle-aged/elderly woman with a perfectly intact hymen instead of one that’s disintegrated naturally?)

So of course word would get out. Who keeps their traps shut about miracles? But of course there wouldn’t be “proof” of the kind some people want, even though it would constitute apostolic-level teaching and eyewitness knowledge.

Of course, the lost five volumes of Papias probably had more eyewitness accounts about Mary than we want to know about. Which, come to think about it, may be the exact reason why the Lord didn’t arrange for Papias’ stuff to survive antiquity, if they included a lot of geezer physicians’ reports. (Heh. I amuse myself.)

The Virgin Birth is doctrine. It has always been doctrine. It is doctrine both in the East and West. If nobody taught you that doctrine, complain about your teachers and not about the doctrine. Don’t try to spiritualize it out of existence.

 

[Mintaka]

Actually, when you think about it, physicians and medical care were a very big part of early Christianity. We tend to think about “the poor” or “soldiers” or other groups, but what pagans knew about Christians is that Christians looked after the sick people in their neighborhoods, and had physicians who worked for free for anyone of any religion.

So it’s particularly silly to think that the Gospels were naive about medical miracles.

 

[jas84173]

Thanks. It does.

If it makes any difference, I’m by far not the only Catholic to have problems with this.

Saint Thomas Aquinas had serious issues with the Immaculate Conception as well.

 

[De_Maria]

No necessarily the same thing.

That was my point. Jesus didn’t need a glorified body to be God almighty. He could turn water into wine, heal the blind and bring the dead back to life. Why then, would He need a glorified body to pass through the birth canal without causing Mary harm?

 

[De_Maria]

Go down three paragraphs.
Mary - “ever-virgin”

499 The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man.154 In fact, Christ’s birth "did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it."155 And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever-virgin”.156

This speaks to her virginal integrity when giving birth.

 

[FrDavid96]

That was my point. Jesus didn’t need a glorified body to be God almighty. He could turn water into wine, heal the blind and bring the dead back to life. Why then, would He need a glorified body to pass through the birth canal without causing Mary harm?

I’ve said this repeatedly already.

Because that is not a human birth.

Think of this another way:

What if we were to say the same of the Crucifixion? What if we say that Christ made a miracle on Calvary so that His body was not pierced by the nails, but only appeared to be so? He made things such that the nails would just pass through Him.

That’s nothing new. That was discussed, debated, and determined to be untrue.

Why? Because when a human body gets nailed to a cross, it dies.

Why is that important? Why must we say that he truly died on the cross?

I won’t answer that only because it would take too much time. Suffice to say that He truly did die on the cross and that His body was a true human body that had the same reaction to being nailed-to-cross that every other human body would necessarily have.

I will skip some parts to get us back to where we started.

Human beings are born. Being born is not incidental to the experience of being a human-being. It is essential. We aren’t hatched, we aren’t delivered by storks. We are born. Birth is a necessary stage of human life.

Christ became a man, that is, the second Person of the Trinity became a true human being, at the moment of His Conception–the event we celebrate as the Annunciation. That was the moment of Incarnation. Not earlier, not later.

Now birth necessarily involves two persons. The baby and the mother. There is no birth if one or the other person does not experience that birth (again, as I said earlier, for discussion, set aside such things as a situation where a baby is delivered from a recently died mother).

If the event of the birth only involves one person to the exclusion of the other person, then there’s no birth.

 

[FrDavid96]

Go down three paragraphs.
Mary - “ever-virgin”

499 The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man.154 In fact, Christ’s birth "did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it."155 And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever-virgin”.156

This speaks to her virginal integrity when giving birth.

Yes. But it does not define "virginal integrity."

I mean really: I keep posting the same thing over and over again.

I will post it yet again (insert exasperated sigh thingey).

It is not necessary for anyone to believe that the definition of the word “virginity” necessary and absolutely includes the detail that if a woman’s bodily parts react to giving birth in the natural way that hat such a woman is no longer a virgin.

Virginity is about a state of being. A state of having no carnal relations with a man. None. None whatsoever.

It is not necessarily about the preservation of a certain body part. This criteria is accidental to the definition of a Virgin, not constitutive to it.

 

[De_Maria]

De_Maria:

That was my point. Jesus didn’t need a glorified body to be God almighty. He could turn water into wine, heal the blind and bring the dead back to life. Why then, would He need a glorified body to pass through the birth canal without causing Mary harm?

I’ve said this repeatedly already.

Because that is not a human birth.

Think of this another way:

What if we were to say the same of the Crucifixion?..

But we didn’t. So lets not complicate matters. The Catechism does speak to Mary’s virginal integrity when giving birth and I made the point that Christ did not need the glorified body to perform any other miracles.

 

[FrDavid96]

Go down three paragraphs.
Mary - “ever-virgin”

499 The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man.154 In fact, Christ’s birth "did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it."155 And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever-virgin”.156

This speaks to her virginal integrity when giving birth.

Do you understand what I mean what I say that asserting and teaching “virginal integrity” is not the same thing as defining “virginal integrity.” ???

 

[JimG]

Everything you have written about the virgin birth makes sense to me. What puzzles me though, is why use the word “during” in the expression of the doctrine? Why not just say that Mary remained ever virgin both before and after the birth of Jesus? Why include “during?”

 

[FrDavid96]

I want people to understand here that I am trying to make 2 overall points.

1— No one is bound to believe as a matter of faith, de fide, that the definition of the word “virgin” or “virginity” absolutely and necessarily includes the biological description of virgo intacta. A virgin is one who has had no carnal relations with a man; that part we must believe. (In other words we cannot say that the word virgin simply means young woman or unmarried woman).

The Church does not require us to give the assent of faith to the notion that if a woman is no longer virgo intacta, but without having had relations with a man, that woman is no longer virgin.

We must make a distinction between the essential truths of the faith and the incidental, non-essential details that help us to formulate and understand those essential truths.

2— On the question of “what actually did happen to the Virgin Mary’s body at the birth?” I am offering my own theological musings and thoughts while trying to explain the process behind those thoughts.

Keep in mind this distinction, please.

#1 is simply an explanation to clarify a misunderstanding of what we either are or are-not required to believe.

#2 is my own thinking and theologizing based on, and in harmony with, the deposit of faith as held by the Catholic Church. Take it or leave it. Discuss it. Dialogue. Respond. Agree or disagree.

 

[De_Maria]

Yes. But it does not define "virginal integrity."

It defines it enough for me.

I mean really: I keep posting the same thing over and over again.

This is not a clasroom. We are discussing/debating. You have to be prepared to convince people or just agree to disagree.

I will post it yet again (insert exasperated sigh
It is not necessary for anyone to believe that the definition of the word “virginity” necessary and absolutely includes the detail that if a woman’s bodily parts react to giving birth in the natural way that hat such a woman is no longer a virgin.

The opposite is also not necessary. And I believe that idea is the one the Early Church would have held.

Virginity is about a state of being…

[/QUOTE]
With respect. To you. But I’m interested in the Church Teaching.

 

[De_Maria]

Oh. Sorry. I thought you were disputing the idea that the Our Lord was born miraculously, as light passes through a pane of glass.

 

[FrDavid96]

Everything you have written about the virgin birth makes sense to me. What puzzles me though, is why use the word “during” in the expression of the doctrine? Why not just say that Mary remained ever virgin both before and after the birth of Jesus? Why include “during?”

I think that it is to satisfy those who do want to define the word virginity as the biological virgo intacta.

Because of cultural norms, that was how they understood the idea of virginity. If a woman was not virgo intacta, then she was considered a non-virgin no matter how much she might have claimed (even truly) that she never had relations with a man. That was the way of proving or dis-proving virginity.

Another (quite obvious and thankfully less intrusive) way of dis-proving virginity was that if a woman was known to be a mother, she was no longer considered a virgin. It means that we do not say “because she bore a son, she lost her status as virgin.” We do not say that about the Blessed Mother. While giving birth is typically a sure and certain sign of the loss of virginity in a woman, that does not apply to her.

 

[FrDavid96]

With respect. To you. But I’m interested in the Church Teaching.

This is the frustrating part for me.

I keep trying to articulate the fact that there is no Church teaching that requires anyone to believe that a necessary criteria for Virginity is virgo intacta.

That is not Church teaching. That part is not a matter of doctrine.

 

[FrDavid96]

Oh. Sorry. I thought you were disputing the idea that the Our Lord was born miraculously, as light passes through a pane of glass.

I am offering my thoughts on the matter.

But we keep coming back to the same thing. From the way you phrase that, you seem to be implying that this is a necessary doctrine (as light passes through glass). I am trying (ever so patiently, I think) to explain why that is NOT a necessary belief.

 

[De_Maria]

Yes. But that is besides the point. We aren’t discussing virgins in general. What does the Church say about Our Lady? What does the Church say about HER virginal integrity before, during and after the birth of Our Lord?