Mother Mary as perpetual Virgin

[esieffe]

The holy family received protection. They were warned when to flee to Egypt and so on. What was and was not customary during these times, wasn’t going to stand in the way once Mary and Joseph accepted God’s request.

 

[po18guy]

“Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (her Son)
“Behold the bondslave of the Lord” (her Son)
How many masters may a slave serve? (according to her Son)

 

[adgloriam]

So many deep questions
Thanks

@Rozellelily you are back !! I missed you lady

 

[OddBird]

It is not disrespectful, but actually wise to discern that some theologies are just … well … what’s the right word to use here … erroneous.

The whole ‘perpetual virginity’ is grossly erroneous

I would engage you to be careful here. You are on a Catholic website, and Mary’s perpetual virginity is Catholic dogma. Going about on Mary-themed threads and characterizing Marian dogma as “grossly erroneous” could be seen as a violation of the forum rules (“Non-Catholics are welcome to participate but must be respectful of the faith of the Catholics participating on the board.”)

More directly on topic, two notes :

• Mary is never explicitly presented as the mother of Jesus’ “brothers”. On the contrary, Jesus, on the cross, confies her to John, which would indicate she had no other children to take care of her.
• To me, as well as (more importantly) to the tradition, it does not make sense that Mary, as a virgin, would conceive from the Holy Spirit, give birth among angels singing Hosanna while more angels visit her husband in his sleep, and go on having normal relations with him as if that extraordinary miracle had not happened ; this would be discarding that unique intimacy with God in favor of intimacy with Joseph.

 

[po18guy]

1. Please mind your manners. (and forum rules).
2. READ the bible: Other than Jesus, ZERO ‘children of Mary’ are listed. ZERO. Why do you ADD TO SCRIPTURE?
3. Gabriel stated “You will bear A SON” - singular.
4. READ the bible: Mary did, in no way, expect to have a child.
5. READ the bible: Zechariah 12:10. “First born” “only Son” Let’s do the math: 1+0=1
6. Consider adopting the attitude of “Hey! I guess I don’t know every stinkin’ thing in the world.”
7. I know women who remained virgin their entire lives. Ever hear of a “spinster aunt” Google it. And they were not the bond-slave of the Lord.
8. Please don’t burst in through the doors, both guns blazing and try to teach 1.5 BILLION Catholic and Orthodox Christians about Christian history.
9. With respect to your thoughts, are you thinking as 21st century man does and not as God does?
10. Let us resume…

 

[Gorgias]

You don’t have any “evidence” supporting your point either, since we’re not required to accept the Protoevangelium as Catholic teaching.

I’m not saying that the Protoevangelium is “evidence.”

whether she was planning on that before or only after the angel’s visit is a moot point, and I am not convinced by your mostly speculative arguments.

Nor I by yours that she wasn’t planning precisely those things.

Pious legends and private revelations are interesting to read and speculate on, but at the end of the day, Catholics are free to not believe in them.

Again: we’re not basing this on “pious legend”. The Church teaches that Mary was perpetually virgin, not just “virgin from the time of Gabriel’s visit”. If you want to make the case “well, she was only betrothed a little while until the time of the angelic visit”, then that’s up to you.

Mary and Joseph had a normal marriage relationship

And you can demonstrate this how, please?

for someone who is supposed to be the “new Eve”, as claimed, they sure miss the whole point of marriage from Genesis to begin with.

You are forgetting who did the conceiving in Mary’s womb. That’s why it seems “grossly erroneous” and “distort[ed]” to you.

 

[Gorgias]

I cannot, for the evidence in scripture would preclude such an erroneous ideology.

OK… let’s see it, then. So far, you’ve only shown quotes about marriage in general (and Christian marriage in general, for some of those!). Where is the “evidence in Scripture” that Mary wasn’t a perpetual virgin?

 

[Bluebright]

Really? So the place where the holiest most blessed ‘baby’ The Lord himself lived and sustained his nourishment is fit for any old child to grow in, that’s your thinking? you think that you for instance are fit to follow? ie to grow in the womb that previously carried the Word made flesh. I tell you I don’t think I am. I think nothing and no one could or should ever be there, as we are rightly taught by the Church. I mean we don’t use the chalice and ciborium to drink ordinary wine and eat ordinary food at the next church dinner do we? so why use Our Lady’s womb for anything mundane.

 

[godisgood77]

Really? So the place where the holiest most blessed ‘baby’ The Lord himself lived and sustained his nourishment is fit for any old child to grow in, that’s your thinking? you think that you for instance are fit to follow? ie to grow in the womb that previously carried the Word made flesh. I tell you I don’t think I am. I think nothing and no one could or should ever be there, as we are rightly taught by the Church. I mean we don’t use the chalice and ciborium to drink ordinary wine and eat ordinary food at the next church dinner do we? so why use Our Lady’s womb for anything mundane.

'God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. ’

There is nothing wrong or unholy about relations between a man and woman… in fact, it is a beautiful and holy thing. God saw fit to have man and woman collaborate with Him in the creation of life…

I find it sad that some people have such a low view of God’s design …

 

[Vico]

I don’t want this to sound disrespectful but I find it hard to grasp the idea of Mother Mary as lifelong virgin primarily because of the culture and times that she was born in in the Middle East.
…

Yes, it is miraculous, therefore hard to grasp. See some of the Byzantine Irmos hymns:

Virginity is something foreign to mothers,
and child bearing is strange for virgins.
But in you, O Theotokos, both the one and the other have come to pass.
Therefore, we, the peoples of the earth, unceasingly extol you.

The limits of nature are over come in you, O pure Virgin,
for birth giving remains virginal, and death is the prelude to life:
a virgin after childbearing and alive after death!
You ever save your inheritance, O Theotokos.

 

[thistle]

The traditions of the Church are that Joseph was a widower, presumably with grown children from his first marriage.

I don’t think this was a tradition of the Church.
It only appears in the Protoevangelium of James.

 

[Gorgias]

I don’t think this was a tradition of the Church.
It only appears in the Protoevangelium of James.

It’s one of the things that folks say. Not “big-T” tradition, of course.

 

[Mintaka]

There is nothing wrong with marital sex. Of course. All Jews would agree.

So when David and his men showed up at the Temple, begging for bread, and the priest said, “Okay, it’s an emergency, so I’ll give you the Bread of the Presence,” why did he ask about whether David and his men had had any sex lately?

Hint: It wasn’t because it would have been wicked if they had been with their wives recently. It wasn’t because sex was filthy and disgusting.

It was because sex can be both a good act, and an act that was not to be mixed with God and His stuff. That’s what all the “clean” and “unclean” stuff is.

All of the Jewish priests abstained from marital sex during the period of their Temple service. (And their wives observed special regulations and got special compensations, just like priests, and sometimes in additional ways.)

The more stuff you do with God directly in your face, the more you have to stay in a state appropriate and ready for God’s service. You have to fast or stay away from various good but worldly or normal things. And if you consecrate yourself eternally to God, like a chalice or a Temple vessel, or like certain categories of person, the more you have to do that forever.

Mary seems to have taken a vow not have marital relations, as described in Leviticus et al. She also bore the Lord inside her body for nine months, and participated in the common Jewish expectations about the mother of the Messiah, and about being the queen mother/gebirah. She was a living Ark of the Covenant, as described in Revelation, and the gate opened only by the Lord, as described in Ezekiel.

So yeah, if she had wanted Joseph to have his arm withered, or to get him struck by lightning or swallowed by the earth… sure. Go ahead and break a voluntary vow, and also get intimate with the Ark of the Covenant. (You do it first.)

 

[Gorgias]

Hint: It wasn’t because it would have been wicked if they had been with their wives recently. It wasn’t because sex was filthy and disgusting.

It was because sex can be both a good act, and an act that was not to be mixed with God and His stuff. That’s what all the “clean” and “unclean” stuff is.

Umm… actually, it was because the men vowed to abstain from sex while on campaign. So, what was being asked was “are you acting morally, by keeping your vows?”

She was a living Ark of the Covenant, as described in Revelation, and the gate opened only by the Lord, as described in Ezekiel.

So yeah, if she had wanted Joseph to have his arm withered, or to get him struck by lightning or swallowed by the earth… sure. Go ahead and break a voluntary vow, and also get intimate with the Ark of the Covenant. (You do it first.)

To be fair, you’re conflating “literal ark of the covenant” with a spiritualized understanding of who Mary is. There’s no expectation that anyone who dared to even touch Mary would die, as would have been the expectation with the OT ark…