of related posts. Today we'll begin looking at the second of Pastor Pete's problems with the Catholic faith:I don’t believe that Mary remained a virgin after the birth of Jesus and I don’t see any reason to hold that view in order to be saved from eternal damnation and be catholic. She obviously needed to be a virgin at the conception of Jesus in order to fulfill the prophecies of Isaiah concerning the virgin birth of Jesus. The Bible definitely refers to Jesus’ brothers and sisters, despite attempts to explain them away. So what if she was intimate with Joseph after Jesus’ birth. I say good for her and good for Joseph. Marital intimacy is a God given blessing. It isn’t something to look down on as immoral or some sort of human imperfection. It is something to praise God for. So unless there is some reason that escapes me, I don’t see the reason to divide people (i.e. differentiate true believers from non-true believers) on this point.
I think it best to start with what the Catechism (499-500) teaches:
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. In fact, Christ's birth "did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it." And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the "Ever-virgin".500 Against this doctrine the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus. The Church has always understood these passages as not referring to other children of the Virgin Mary. In fact James and Joseph, "brothers of Jesus", are the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom St. Matthew significantly calls "the other Mary". They are close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression.
More on the latter point:
The perpetual virginity of Mary has always been reconciled with the biblical references to Christ’s brethren through a proper understanding of the meaning of the term "brethren." The understanding that the brethren of the Lord were Jesus’ stepbrothers (children of Joseph) rather than half-brothers (children of Mary) was the most common one until the time of Jerome (fourth century). It was Jerome who introduced the possibility that Christ’s brethren were actually his cousins, since in Jewish idiom cousins were also referred to as "brethren." The Catholic Church allows the faithful to hold either view, since both are compatible with the reality of Mary’s perpetual virginity.Today most Protestants are unaware of these early beliefs regarding Mary’s virginity and the proper interpretation of "the brethren of the Lord." And yet, the Protestant Reformers themselves—Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli—honored the perpetual virginity of Mary and recognized it as the teaching of the Bible, as have other, more modern Protestants.
For most of Christian history, Mary’s Perpetual Virginity was a commonplace belief, even well into the Protestant Reformation. But in our hyper-sexualized culture— and, like it or not, this is the culture in which Christians and non-Christians are now submerged like fish in the sea—people find it extremely difficult to contemplate the possibility of a life of virginity as anything but one of unbearable deprivation. So before we ever get to discussing what Scripture says, we’ve got a gigantic cultural hostility to virginity to overcome.Moreover, of course, our cultural biases aren’t confined to sex. Many card-carrying members of our consumer culture will wonder why anyone would choose to believe in something like Mary’s Perpetual Virginity. Behind such thinking is the notion of the Catholic faith as a mere smorgasbord of “belief options” that are there to accessorize our fashion choices. And so, conventional wisdom says: If you’re one of those strange souls who “like” virginity, then you can choose to believe in Mary’s Perpetual Virginity because it “suits your lifestyle.” But if you’re not one of these odd ducks, then why bother believing it?The answer is that the Catholic faith is not a product of consumer culture. It proposes certain truths to us, not because they suit our lifestyle, but because they’re true.
If, as Pastor Pete suggests, we are disqualified to be Catholic, we are disqualified only by our unwillingness to see and recognize authority outside of ourselves.
UPDATE: A cyber-friend of mine made the sound argument that I had left unanswered Pastor Pete's objections to the Catholic notion that Mary and Joseph were never intimate, particularly in light of Pastor Pete's rightly expressed opinion that God blesses marital sexual union. In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls it “noble and honorable,” established by God so that spouses can “experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit.” (#2362).
Answering Pastor Pete's objection lies in first coming to understand how Catholics see Mother Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant.
HH Ambrose, in a piece titled 4 Biblical Reasons Mary Is The New Ark of the Covenant, covers the following points in detail:
The Old Ark Was the Physical Dwelling Place of the Shekinah Glory
The New Ark Was the Physical Dwelling Place of the Word IncarnateArk Contained the Commandments, Manna, & Aaron’s Rod
New Ark Contained Christ Our Lord: Logos, Bread of Life, King/PriestKing David & the Ark
Elizabeth & the New ArkThe Old Was Lost
The New Ark is Found
Read Ambrose's entire piece and then, with that as background, ponder this from a Catholic named Aaron Traas who answers Pastor Pete's question directly:
What would have been so horrible about her and Joseph enjoying the intimacy God provided for a married couple?
It's not that it would have been horrible -- indeed, it is good for a man to know his wife in this sense. In Catholic teaching, however, there are two other things at play here: the notion of sacrifice, and piety with respect to the holy. When we sacrifice things, we sacrifice good things. This goes for burnt offerings and little penances alike. When, for instance, a monk or a nun take vows of poverty and chastity, it isn't because sex and wealth aren't good things -- indeed, they are! But the spiritual good is better than the temporal good, and they are choosing, out of love of God, to give certain things up to seek further spiritual nourishment.
Piety and reverence to the holy is something that in the Catholic/Orthodox do a bit different than other traditions. For instance, traditionally the vessels of consecration, the tabernacle, the altar, etc. are all veiled. Women, traditionally, veil their head in prayer, particularly in the presence of the blessed sacrament. The veiling hides them from plain sight, not because they are bad, but because they are holy and beautiful. Joseph abstained from relations with Mary because she was the tabernacle -- she contained Jesus within her. She was the ultimate sacred vessel -- the Theotokos -- who bore God. Out of reverence, awe, respect, and love, he had forgone relations with her.
It makes so much sense... does it not?
UPDATE II: I've put up a new post I'm making a part of the series. It doesn't respond to any of Pastor Pete's objections in a particular sense however, I think it applies to them all in a more general sense. Go here and partake.
I have a comment about veiling. Yes, it was traditional for women to cover their heads in church, but were veils as we think of them--headcoverings which are worn solely for church--popular for much of history? I remember wearing a veil to church as a young child in the 1960's, but pictures of churchgoers in the 1940's and 50's show women wearing hats-the same type of hats they would wear to go shopping or out to a play. My mom attended a Catholic girls college in the late 1940's and they weren't allowed to leave campus without hat and gloves (and if they were wearing slacks for some recreational activity, they had to use the back stairs to the dorm. Women (and men) used to wear hat regularly. Many of the elaborate nuns veils we remember were made like the common headgear of women of the culture in which the order was founded.
Posted by: Ruthjoec | Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 11:45 PM