Mary and Marriage

[Eruvande]

I’m still grappling with this issue, and I’m not sure I understand some things. I’m less troubled by Mary’s perpetual virginity than I used to be, but I’m still confused. The Church has certain teachings about marriage and being open to life an so on, and yet the Blessed Virgin had a marriage that, as I understand it, was never consumated. Is this not a bit of a contradiction?

I suppose the best way I can understand it is the Joseph and Mary chose to live together as brother and sister. Is that appropriate?

 

[DavidFilmer]

Mary and Joseph were certainly open to life - even to the most bizarre pregnancy in all of human history. “Be it done unto me according to your word.” Nobody has ever been asked to be more open to life than Mary and Joseph.

 

[Mintaka]

The Church doesn’t put a gun to married couples’ heads and make them have sex.

Like St. Paul said, it’s totally okay for couples to take a time to focus on prayer. This was a Jewish custom before it was a Christian one. Mary and Joseph just decided to spend their whole lives focusing on prayer. It wouldn’t be everyone’s choice, but they didn’t have to live everyone’s life.

And if God hadn’t approved, He was living in their house! Pretty easy to let them know!

 

[Eruvande]

Thanks. Helpful thoughts!

 

[epan]

I’m still grappling with this issue, and I’m not sure I understand some things. I’m less troubled by Mary’s perpetual virginity than I used to be, but I’m still confused. The Church has certain teachings about marriage and being open to life an so on, and yet the Blessed Virgin had a marriage that, as I understand it, was never consumated. Is this not a bit of a contradiction?

I suppose the best way I can understand it is the Joseph and Mary chose to live together as brother and sister. Is that appropriate?

When I took a class taught by a teacher from Yale’s Divinity School, on exegetical reading of the New Testament, one of the early challenges by the instructor was to find any biblical support for a number of commonly held Christian ideas. It turns out that a fair number of religious beliefs are simply made up, and have no direct relationship to biblical text.

Unfortunately, on CAF, the discussion can’t go any further on this topic.

If you PM me, I can provide links to instruction, which is freely available, and which is not biased. By “not biased”, I mean based on the current historic record, and the current translations of the bible. It is a moving target as the historic record improves, and the textual record improves, through new discovery and improved translation.

 

[Porknpie]

I’m still grappling with this issue, and I’m not sure I understand some things. I’m less troubled by Mary’s perpetual virginity than I used to be, but I’m still confused. The Church has certain teachings about marriage and being open to life an so on, and yet the Blessed Virgin had a marriage that, as I understand it, was never consumated. Is this not a bit of a contradiction?

I suppose the best way I can understand it is the Joseph and Mary chose to live together as brother and sister. Is that appropriate?

Couple of thoughts:

Keep in mind that the tradition passed down in the Church is that Joseph was an older man and his marriage to Mary was his second marriage after his first wife had passed away. He married her to take care of her as she was a consecrated virgin.

The second thought is that Joseph, a good Jew, would have known better than us, that Mary was the Mother of God and the Ark of the New Covenant. She was Holy. No one would ever have touched the OT Ark … and likewise, touching the NT Ark would have been unthinkable.

 

[Porknpie]

When I took a class taught by a teacher from Yale’s Divinity School, on exegetical reading of the New Testament, one of the early challenges by the instructor was to find any biblical support for a number of commonly held Christian ideas. It turns out that a fair number of religious beliefs are simply made up, and have no direct relationship to biblical text.

Unfortunately, on CAF, the discussion can’t go any further on this topic.

There have been a lot of threads started on the man-made doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

No Catholic doctrine, not one, contradicts scripture.

Should we start one and discuss whatever made up belief that Yale Divinity School believes is not found in scripture? Doing so is very much permitted under CAF rules.

Interesting that the same professor that taught your class, tacitly trusts the authority of the Catholic Church to have discerned what is in fact scripture, at least the 27 books of the NT out of several hundred early Christian writings.

That the professor then disagrees with the same Church on faith and morals … is most contradictory.