Discovering Mary, by David Mills

     Reading David Mills' new book, Discovering Mary, was enlightening for me (and I have no doubt it would be enlightening for many other Catholics like me), in ways the author might not have foreseen.  For David assumes, justifiably, that people who have been Roman Catholic all their lives possess a natural and easily-expressed love for the Mother of God; and it is just this love that he himself, to his great delight, has discovered.  I wish it were so.  I recall reading a sentence by Hans Kung, the renegade Catholic priest and self-promoter, to the effect that he would rather have one more sentence by Saint Paul than all the utterances from all the Marian apparitions combined.  They were all so banal, you see; all they did, over and over, was to exhort the simple people, those with the hearts of children, to turn to Jesus and to heed his words.  I neglected to consider that Father Kung could have had plenty of additional sentences written by Saint Paul, if only he would condescend to include in that category the epistles to the Ephesians, the Colossians, Timothy, and Titus.  I could recommend to him quite a few sentences by Saint Peter, to boot.

     I've long ceased to pay any mind to the railers of my youth, but the damage done to my heart was considerable nevertheless.  So when I read David's wonderful book, and find in it a man in love with that woman who bore our Lord, who suckled him at the breast, who appealed to him at Cana, who followed him as he preached, who stood beside him at the Cross, who entered the home of the beloved disciple, and who prayed with the apostles at Pentecost, I am both delighted and abashed.  "I found myself," David writes, "without really thinking about it, loving the vessel who held so great a thing as the Incarnate God.  I learned to speak to her without feeling self-conscious about it.  I can't imagine thinking the way I used to, the love and glory of Our Lady are so clear to me now."

     Our Lady: that delicate title of reverence sums up the richness and the wise sanity of this book.  It is not saccharine, not in the slightest.  Instead, David attempts to show his readers what he has come to believe about Mary, and why it is deeply in accord with all that he believes about Jesus Christ.  He has the rare privilege of understanding what those who do not agree with him believe and why they believe it, and what he now sees, and why he sees it.  And he is able, in language that is winningly direct, to show us what he sees.  He "reads" the life of Mary just as he reads the life of Jesus, with a clearheaded sensitivity to the unspoken mysteries of the text.  And those mysteries are there, he says, "not because theologians are inventive but because God's truth is deep and His revelation complex."  For example, all we are told of the youth of Jesus in Nazareth is that he was obedient to his mother and father; but that laconic statement by Saint Luke opens us out into a world of quiet mystery, of the boy who both mother and foster-father knew was the son of God, taught by them to say his prayers to the Father with whom he was one.  In the same way, all we are told of Mary's life after the death of Jesus is that she went to live with John, "but the Church has found in it all sorts of hints and clues as to the deeper meaning God, speaking through John, intended it to have."  Why, David notes, would John include the scene at all?  Why did Jesus call Mary by the universal "woman" at Cana?  Why would he say to her then, "It is not my hour?"

     What David gives us is a deft reading of all the Marian passages in Scripture, as from someone who had never paid them much mind, and who now sees that beneath the dust of neglect lies true gold.  Let me give a few examples.  In the Annunciation scene from Luke, the angel, having called Mary full of grace, "declares to Mary what God would do but still waits for her answer.  The declaration is made in confidence, but the answer is still awaited.  Here again Mary shows us both what we ought to be and what we shall be: creatures who in perfect freedom choose God."  Now that is fascinating -- and I ask myself, "How have I missed the tense of that verb, all these years?"  What the angel speaks must come to pass, and will inevitably come to pass, but only via the free choice of Mary -- via her complete love for God, which is itself God's great gift to her.

     Another example: John's gospel does not mention Mary at all until the account of the wedding at Cana, the first miracle recorded in the Gospel.  Yet that account, says David, "also contains the last words of Mary that the Bible gives us, significantly enough, 'Do whatever he tells you.'"  It is a telling point.  After all, by the testimony of this very gospel, Mary spent the rest of her years with the apostle John -- with the author himself.  Surely she must have told the beloved John many of the details of Jesus' life, enough, as he says at the end of his gospel, to fill all the books in the world.  That means, as David says, that information about the birth of Jesus could have been gotten by a Matthew or a Luke easily enough: they could have asked John about it, or they could have asked someone to whom John had spoken.  But for John, who probably wrote after those gospels had been composed, the woman at the wedding, the woman beneath the cross, and the woman whom he took care of, is the woman who says, definitively, "Do whatever he tells you."  It is exactly what the mother of the Body of Christ, the Church, would say, and says evermore.

     The book is studded with gems -- often as answers to questions that a good and careful Christian -- not just the soul scorched by Kung and his like -- would ask about Mary.  For instance, David asks, "Didn't Jesus declare that Mary was not important when he said that whoever does the will of His Father is really His mother?"  Wasn't Mary just a delivery system for the Son of God, of no importance thereafter?  But there is an irony in Mark 3:31-35, as David points out: "Mary herself is the supreme and perfect example of a human being who did and does the will of His Father . . . Jesus was not dismissing Mary but making a point.  He is not declaring her superseded by His disciples but extending the gift given to the immaculately conceived Mother of God to everyone who turns to Him and His Father."  Even the ragtag followers can be such as she.  Or, as the medieval poem Pearl puts it, precisely because Mary is the "Queen of courtesy," every maiden who enters heaven is crowned queen, and is a bride of the blessed Lamb.

     One last virtue of the book -- and there are many more, which I could only recount by going through the work page by page.  David has a kind of straightforward sensibleness, like that of Lewis or Chesterton.  Once you accept that Jesus is the Son of God, it is downright silly not to accept, for instance, that he could have performed miracles in that home in Nazareth.  He might have, or he might not have, but something surely justified the absolute confidence that Mary placed in Him at Cana.  Or if you accept the Virgin Birth, you really can have no definitive argument against the ancient view -- David cites Augustine for it -- that Mary remained a virgin in her parturition, with Jesus' entry into the world analogous to his passing through the sealed tomb and through closed doors after the Resurrection.  Unbelievers, of course, would smirk; but then, they smirk at everything.

Comments

[Beth from TN]

I am so looking forward to reading this book. Thanks for giving us a taste of it, Tony.

[holmegm]

One always feels boorish, or course, having questions about others' affections ... I do wish they were avoidable.

The affections are always so warm, passionate, philosophical, and the questions by necessity so party crashing in contrast. It's never fun being the rain on the parade :(

Yes, this will be quite interesting to read.

[Margaret]

What I have never understood is the WHY of believing that Mary remained a virgin in her parturition. Symbolically or theologically, what is the necessity of that belief?

If God made the world and called it good, made the body and blessed it, has no adverse opinion of female equipment, and chose to use normal gestation, what would be lost in holiness if Mary experienced the process of birth like all women and Jesus came as frankly and as blood-streaked into the world as any baby?

What precept would be violated in the heavenlies? Or what disappointment to piety would ensue?

Does it all come down to one's definition of a virgin--is the simple definition of one who has not engaged in sexual intercourse with a man not enough, but rather, none of her reproductive organs can have been employed in their normal functions? Not to make myself blush, but I see that which proceeds INTO a woman as affecting her virginity, not that which comes out.

Also, if the law and prophecy are fulfilled in all aspects of Jesus' life, including his birth, what do we do with Genesis 3:16, "in pain you will bring forth children?"

Not trying to be a stinker here, this is sincerely puzzling to me.

[Tony]

Fair questions, Margaret. I don't think the Church teaches that there was any necessity for Mary to remain virginal in parturition. It teaches that it was a fact, though. (I am not sure, either, whether it teaches this as something which, if doubted, would separate one from communion with Catholics; I am inclined to think not, but I am open to being corrected.) The teaching is linked to that other teaching about Mary, that her Redeemer saved her from sin at the moment of her conception; so that she was not subject to the curse of Eve. What she conceived without pleasure, she bore without pain.

[Kamilla]

Tony,

Thank you for this beautiful post! And also for you answer to Margaret. That helps a bit although, like Margaret, I still find many of the teachings about Mary puzzling. I *never* thought *that's* what was meant by her perpetual virginity, for instance.

I can't wait to read it so I finally ordered my copy yesterday.

Kamilla

[Chris]

One of the last things to hold me back from returning to the Catholic Church after 35 years, a faith by the way that I loved as a child, was Mary. My family didn't practice the faith, no one in my presence but my paternal grandmother said the rosary, I had no connection to Mary. My connection to the faith was God the Father, whom I believed with all my heart and spirit was truly present in his House, on the altar.

And yet as a Protestant, when I would hear such silly musings as "I wish Jesus were a couple, then it would be easier for me to relate to Him" (yes, that from a young woman in a second hour class at our Congregational church), I would think, it is really too bad that they don't have Mary. But then I would hear that the Church was thinking of declaring Mary Redemptrix and I would be angry. How could they take redemption away from Jesus! Well of course, I didn't understand the word and more importantly to me, the Pope in the wisdom given him by Christ, recognized that this wasn't the time to add to the development of doctrine.

Then I had a very specific conversion 'experience' and I could no longer put off returning to the Catholic Faith. What struck me one evening was, that in returning, all my questions, fears etc about Mary had disappeared. I turned to praying the rosary almost immediately and have been looking to Mary as Queen of Heaven and 'mother' since then. Praying the rosary early on with specific virtues in mind gave me so much insight into the Bible passages that I had read but not considered as closely as I might.

I do not think that I am detracting from Christ but rather that Mary is my prayer partner and the 'mother that I cannot be' often times for my own children. EVeryday I pray for her to 'be the mother I and other mothers cannot be and to be the mother for those who have none.' And I KNOW that she delivers up and makes sure those prayers are answered.

[Emily-Rose]

I'm afraid I'm confused as well...

Does the Catholic church teach that Mary always remained a virgin or that she simply remained a virgin until after Jesus was born?

Not trying to smirk, but this is one of the elements of Catholic theology that has most puzzled me.

[CKG]

I too am looking forward to reading this book. I am a Catholic convert (many years ago, by now), who has had an off-and-on struggle with the Catholic Church's Marian doctrines, even while embracing Catholicism as my own, as best I've been able. Perhaps I've been a bit 'uncritical' of my own thoughts; may the Lord have mercy.

But, some years back, I began to move toward a greater measure of clarity, when one Advent, it occurred to me that, if only as the human vessel of the Incarnation, Mary was a much bigger deal than I had previously intuited. . .

[Maureen]

Early Christians overwhelmingly believed that Mary was a physical virgin before and after Jesus' birth, as well as giving birth painlessly. There were various thoughts as to the mechanism of it. ("The same way Jesus got conceived, duh", seems to be the general underlying principle.)

Given that Jesus is the Good Physician and miraculous healer, and controls every atom in the universe, this really isn't so very difficult for Him to manage. And since I don't have to manage it, I'm fairly unconcerned about the mechanism of it.

[David Mills]

I should thank Tony for his very kind review. It was encouraging. I'm sure it made my publisher happy too, for which a writer is always grateful.

And thank the rest of you for the interesting responses. Particularly interesting was the issue that attracted the most attention. It often does, maybe bec. it seems to us today the oddest.

The Virgin Parturition -- the Virgin Birth proper -- which might be called the second stage of the Perpetual Virginity, is one of those teachings for which the Church has not developed an explanation. It is held by the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, and was held by some of the magisterial Reformers as well.

Yet there's been surprisingly little speculation about it among the theologians and devotional writers. As I wrote in the book:

<< The second is the least mentioned and the least understood. It holds that Mary kept her physical integrity (an intact hymen) during birth. The Fathers were much less squeamish about these things than we are, and Saint Ambrose declared somewhat graphically, “When He [Jesus] was born from His mother's womb, He yet preserved the fence of her chastity and the inviolate seal of her virginity.” Giving birth to Christ while remaining a virgin was as much a miracle as His miraculous conception itself — but also no more a miracle.

Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine argued for it the virgin parturition using events from Jesus’ life like His emerging from the sealed tomb and His passing through closed doors after His resurrection, and from analogies like light passing through glass and a human thought going out from the mind. Ambrose offered a biblical argument as well, writing that, “Holy Mary is the gate of which it is written: ‘The Lord will pass through it, and it will be shut’ after birth, for as a virgin she conceived and gave birth.” >>

"Why was it necessary?" is probably not the right question to ask. We don't know enough to say that the Virginal Conception was *necessary*. And this would be true for almost every truth we have, including the Incarnation itself. For all we know, God could have done things differently.

In all these matters, the Church first receives what she believes she's been given and lets those who reflect on such things work it out over time and as they feel led. I suspect, though am not learned enough to say with any confidence, that the reflection on the "why" questions are almost always the least convincing and the least useful, bec. the thinker always runs up against the reality of our great limitations in these matters.

I can see someone disbelieving in the Virginal Parturition or the Perpetual Virginity itself, but they shouldn't reject it bec. they don't see the point. That's an acid that dissolves everything. That they believe the belief unbiblical or at least unattested in Scripture, or depending on too high a view of Tradition, are better grounds.

[GL]

I finished reading David's wonderful new book a couple of weeks ago. As a Protestant, I find the book very enlightening. I heartily recommend it to other Protestants who want a better understanding of what our Catholic brothers believe about the Mother of God and how it impacts their devotional practices.

[James K.]

"Early Christians overwhelmingly believed that Mary was a physical virgin"

I think this is what makes the teaching so hard for modern-day Christians to understand - because we think of virginity as a moral rather than a physical characteristic. Medically, there is no such thing as a "physical virgin." A virgin is a woman who has not had sexual intercourse, not someone with organs in a particular physical condition. My understanding is that science is clear that sometimes the hymen breaks in an accident or even spontaneously for no discernable reason.

I understand the idea that Mary had no labor pains due to being exempt from original sin and therefore from Eve's curse (although Jesus submitted Himself for a time to Adam's curse of having to work for a living), but this other doctrine makes me surprised that God showed a concern with something purely physical, although of course I submit myself to the judgment of the Church and understand that sometimes God does things for mysterious reasons that we will understand after death.

[Maggie]

I'd NEVER heard of Mary being "virginal in parturition" 'til just now. The Church believes it, so I don't feel a need to argue it necessarily - but I must admit to being slightly disappointed at the idea.

I always found some amount of comfort and solidarity in the idea that Christ was brought into the world with the same amount of pain and effort as every other child.

[GL]

Actually, work is not part of the curse. The difficulty of work and the resistance of nature to its fruits is the curse. But as I understand it, Adam worked in the Garden before his fall and before the curse was pronounced.

[Kamilla]

GL,

It seems to me, the same should go for childbearing - the pronouncement in Genesis 3:16 to Eve is that her pains in chilbearing will be *greatly increased*, not that they would commence, having never been painful before.

Kamilla

[David Mills]

One small correction: the question of whether Mary suffered pain in childbirth and what I've called the second stage of the Perpetual Virginity are separate matters. The Catholic Church has no official statement on the former. A learned Catholic friend who read the manuscript said that all I could say was that many saints have believed that Mary did not suffer pain in childbirth, but we can't assert this as certain.

About the idea that "this other doctrine makes me surprised that God showed a concern with something purely physical," this is a God who told his people how to set up camp, including where to put the latrines. It shouldn't surprise us that He pays attention to such details. There is nothing purely physical, in the sense of spiritually irrelevant, because the physical always points to or away from the eternal.

[Ethan C.]

>I can see someone disbelieving in the Virginal Parturition or the Perpetual Virginity itself, but they shouldn't reject it bec. they don't see the point.<<

I think there's a better way to understand what Protestants mean when they employ this argument. For many, it's not a matter of disbelieving the doctrine because we don't see the point, but rather rejecting the centrality or importance of the doctrine because we don't see the point.

If it is merely a matter of historical facts, then it's difficult to see why it has such a central place in Catholic devotion to Mary, or (as Stuart Koehl pointed out elsewhere) in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy. It would be as if there were a tradition that held that there were exactly three cows, two chickens, and 18 mice in the manger at the time of the birth, and that fact somehow became a central part of the Christmas liturgy.

And, of course, Protestants are by habit given to suspicion about any doctrine that we are told ought to be believed merely because tradition and church practice assert it. We tend to believe that there were an awful lot of those floating around prior to the Reformation that even the Catholic Church herself has since repudiated.

So Protestants ask, in all humility, why must one believe in the Perpetual Virginity, and specifically in the Parturition? Merely because tradition holds to it? But tradition holds to a lot of other things which the Catholic Church does not consider necessary for communion, nor spend nearly as much time and effort emphasizing. What is special about the doctrine of perpetual virginity that privileges it above other traditional doctrines?

[Margaret]

What I mean by asking "why" is not to be a reductionist or spoilsport, but to ask whether there is a meet, right, and compelling reasoning or good sense that drives Marian dogma, whether in terms of symbolism, prophesy, or logic.

Consider, for example, that it is necessary to believe that Christ actually died physically for our sins, didn't just faint on the cross, if the Lamb of God prophecies were to be fulfilled. And he must have risen bodily to have conquered death and decay and demonstrate the firstfruits of our own heavenly, corporeal bodies.

That this dogma is necessary can be understood by reasoning within the context of revelation and observing the plain meaning of events--note the pains He took to prove his bodily resurrection, eg, eating fish, having Thomas poke his wounds. It was necessary that no bones be broken to fulfill the scriptures of the sacrifice without blemish; it was necessary that he be born in Bethlehem AND that "out of Egypt have I called my son."

We have self-confirming scriptural authority in these and hundreds of other points of belief. But the Marian claims seem loose and inessential. One could easily say that, for example, "the Lord will pass through it and it will be shut," refers to Jesus destroying death, or fulfilling and ending the redemptive mechanisms in the Law rather than to Mary's hymen.

In piety we might take a verse such as "Ho everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the water," and assert that Mary was the vessel for the quenching draft that is Christ, so this is a prophesy about her, and we might even have so great a faith as to claim she never thirsted; or teach that the land of milk and honey refers to Mary Lactans; or grab a hundred images to adoringly apply--but there is no necessary prophetic logic or affirmation of core doctrine, or even the poetical satisfaction of rounding out a myth in so doing. Rather, to the onlooker, the continual reversion to Mary seems to belong with the gallantry that make a swain compare everything he encounters to his mistress.

Not wanting to be a crank, but all things being equal and everything speculative, wouldn't there be equal room for as much beauty and spiritual reward in pondering Mary and Joseph's chastity as a loving, marriage-modeling, procreative husband and wife--to whom Jesus was the firstborn offered to God--as in contemplating flesh miraculously sealed and intacta (even against her Son in childbirth)?

And something I do wonder, is virginity per se SUCH a ne plus ultra prize in the eyes of the Almighty? So very much better than holy chastity?

[James Kabala]

My concerns are different from those from Ethan C. and Margaret, and while I respect them, I don't want to be lumped in with them.

I accept the Perpetual Virginity completely and never had reason to doubt it, but as I said, but I am surprised that the issue of Mary's physical integrity is considered a subdivision of that. If it is true (and I accept it as true), I would think it is a separate grace from the Perpetual Virginity and more related (although also separate, as Mr. Mills reminded me) to the issue of whether Mary had pains in childbirth.

Far be it from me to criticize St. Ambrose, and maybe the shades of meaning are different in the original Latin, but I don't really understand a statement such as "When He was born from His mother's womb, He yet preserved the fence of her chastity and the inviolate seal of her virginity." Chastity and virginity are moral states, not physical ones, and if Christ had been born in the normal way, this would have had nothing to do with the Blesed Mother's virginity, since it had nothing to do with sexual intercourse. If she had had relations with St. Joseph (which she did not), that would have ended her virginity, not anything else. I don't agree with everything Margaret said, as already noted, but I completely agree with her pun on (and reversal of) Jesus's saying about what goes in and what comes out.

[Rob G]

I don't have the references at hand, but there is a stream of patristic thought that links the perpetual virginity to the divinity of Christ, based, if I recall, on the Ezekiel prophecy. I remember Fr. Reardon speaking on this once at his parish outside Pittsburgh back in the 90's. Perhaps he could summarize for us if he's following this?

[Bill R]

Sigh! Confession time. As a younger man, I looked quite sympathetically at the Catholic Church (and Eastern Orthodoxy) and, as I think my comments over the last five years or so show, I retain a great deal of sympathy for both institutions, which is one reason why I love the FSJ, Touchstone, and Mere Comments. But I must say that a few things kept me at an arm's length distance from both churches, and near the top of that list are the Marian issues. I read several books on Mary years ago, both theological and practical, and found that Marian issues drove me away from, not toward, the older churches. My aversion is, perhaps, more emotional than intellectual, but it is clearly there and no amount of reading seems capable of changing that. Which is not to say that I would ever speak ill of Mary--God forbid! But she is simply not part of my faith in the way that she seems to be for most Catholics or Orthodox. Indeed, focusing on Mary seems to drive me further into an evangelical shell.

There. I've said it. And I suspect many, if not most, Protestant readers of MC share much of this feeling.

[David Mills]

A learned Protestant friend came across this thread and sent me his thoughts, and kindly gave me permission to post them.

As a non-Roman Catholic, non-Eastern Orthodox Christian who adamantly believes in the perpetual virginity of Mary the Mother of Our Lord, perhaps I can make a contribution of some value here, as to why all orthodox Christians should – indeed, must – believe in this doctrine.

David Mills' observation "'Why was it necessary?' is probably not the right question to ask" applies to Mary's perpetual virginity as well as to the parturition. (The two are distinct. Virginity refers to sexual congress rather than childbirth, and hence – pace James K. – is something physical as well as moral), and indeed to any mystery of the faith.

The secular notion of mystery (too often adopted uncritically by some Protestants) think of it as something that remains puzzling because there is sufficient information. The Christian understanding of a mystery, however, is of something that, even if completely known factually, remains ultimately irreducible, still hidden even when set forth in plain sight – "something opaque to reason, though not contrary to it" in C. S. Lewis' trenchant phrase. Mysteries are irreducible because they manifest aspects of the infinitude of God to finite minds that by nature cannot comprehend them. They embody G. K. Chesterton's famous observation about embracing two seemingly contradictory truths and living with the tension between them:

“The sane person always cares more for truth than consistency. If he sees two truths that seem to contradict each other, he accepts both truths and the contradiction along with them. His intellectual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.”

In rejecting one or the other, or trying to impose an artificial reconciliation upon them through rationalistic reductionism (both of which lead to heresy), it is the mind of the modern liberal rationalist, not of the orthodox Christian, that is too cramped and small.

That said, revelation and the application thereto of right reason, enable us to comprehend divine mysteries in part, sufficiently for the purposes for which God gives them – our salvation, and ever-deepening personal intimacy with Him. While not absolutely demonstrable in the manner of geometric proofs (neither is love, the greatest of mysteries), there are certain beliefs regarding the divine mysteries that are "fitting" – more conformable to the pattern of Scriptural revelation than the alternatives. Sometimes the difference between what is fitting, and the alternatives, is so great as to mandate belief in the one alternative an rejection of the others as heresy. The perpetual virginity of Mary is one such instance. I now propose to argue why, from a combination of Scripture itself and basic assumptions regarding its exegesis shared by virtually all orthodox Christians..

First, all orthodox Christians accept that Mary is a type – a particular exemplar having special theological import – of the Church, even though there is no explicit direct propositional statement of this in Scripture. They may disagree about the extent and significance of this, but the basic point itself is indisputable among them.

Second, St. Paul explicitly teaches that the Church is – mystically and theologically, though obviously not physically – the Bride of Christ (Eph. 5:22-33). All believers are to be mystically espoused to Christ by the Holy Ghost (II Cor. 11:2) – including men, and including Mary above all as the paradigmatic type of the Church. Of course, no sane person believes that this typological imagery implies gay marriage or mother-son incest (though doubtless some apologists for perversion have argued, or will argue, such in due course). As C. S. Lewis observed regarding male and female as fundamental ordering principles of the Creation, not restricted to biological sex alone (that being merely the chief exemplar), “we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to [Christ].”

Third, Our Lord and St. Paul also explicitly taught the fundamental indissolubility of marriage (Matt. 5:31-32, 19:3-9, etc.) and the putting aside of the polygamy of the O.T. patriarchs and kings as something to be suffered and "winked at" for a season due to the hardness of human hearts, to restore with the fullness of the Gospel revelation the essentially monogamous nature of marriage (cf. I Tim. 3:2, 3:12, and Titus 1:6, where the bishops and deacons are among other things models of conduct for all the faithful). And there are literally hundreds of verses in the Scriptures that denounce adultery and fornication as sins especially grievous in the sight of God.

Fourth, the "one flesh aspect" of all heterosexual intercourse (even fornication with a harlot – I Cor. 6:16), due to its fundamentally procreative nature, means that while the mystical and theological truths can exist distinct and apart from the physical manifestation, the physical manifestation cannot avoid embodying and expressing the correlative mystical and theological aspects and import.

Fifth, all orthodox Christians also admit that Mary needed to have Joseph as an earthly consort. Given the mysterious and miraculous nature of her conception of Our Lord, hidden (as would have been an act of physical coition) from worldly eyes, no one would have believed an unmarried pregnant woman to be anything other than a fornicator, which would have led at least to her expulsion from normal society (including worship in the synagogue and temple), and possibly to her being stoned (hence Joseph's noble intention to "put her away privily" and spare her public disgrace or worse).

These points come together to form a harmonious whole as follows.

First, in the conception of Our Lord, Mary is – mystically and theologically, though obviously not physically – espoused by the Holy Ghost to God the Father. Otherwise Jesus would be – mystically and theologically, even though not physically – a bastard, a child of fornication. (This does not imply, as e.g. most Muslims believe, a crude physical union of a mortal with the Deity after the manner of Greek myths – though C. S. Lewis would probably have been quick to point to those as yet another instance wherein pagan myths partially foreshadowed Christian truths.)

The proposition of Mary as mystically and theologically espoused to God the Father may at first seem startling, even blasphemous. But it is no more so than the proposition that we are espoused to Christ, or than the idea of deification, theosis, as central to our redemption – Jesus’ quotation of Ps. 82 to declare that “ye are gods,” the statement of St. Athanasius that “He became as we are, that we might become as He is,” becoming by grace in creaturely finitude what Christ is by nature in uncreated infinitude.

This mystical and theological espousal is expressed by the term Theotokos, “God-bearer.” For Mary is not a thing, but a person – an ensouled created being (as are all human beings) in relation to her uncreated Maker, and – by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost to beget miraculously in her the incarnate Son – a relation of intimacy unique to her alone.

The notion of Mary as merely the accidental means by which God the Son was brought into the world is a fundamental denial of her personhood as made in the image and likeness of God, a reduction of her to the status of an object or tool. And the similar suggestion that the choice of Mary was indifferent – that it might just as well have been any other woman instead – is a denial of the divine Providence which predestined her before all time to her unique vocation as the Theotokos, the second Eve, with an utterly singular role in the redemption of fallen mankind, while also yet allowing her freely to assent to the same. (Those who pit predestination and free will against each other to deny one or the other contradict Chesterton’s observation and fall prey to heresy, by limiting how the two can interact to the confines of finite human minds rather than the infinity of God.) These denials are irreducibly assaults upon the very nature of the Incarnation.

Once the fittingness and necessity of the nature of Mary’s divine vocation as the Theotokos is granted, two key points immediately follow.

The first is that to make Joseph not merely her divinely appointed consort for her earthly protection, but her full husband in all ways, is to make Mary mystically and theologically an adulteress and bigamist. No amount of sentimental speculation about sexual relations between Joseph and Mary as natural husband and wife can change that. By having Mary conceive Our Lord by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, while having Joseph serve as her protective consort, the integrity of the mystical and theological on one side, and the physical on the other, were distinguished and mutually preserved. But for Joseph to have physically consummated union with Mary by sexual relations would have meant for him to unite himself with her mystically and theologically as well in sacrilegious opposition to the Holy Ghost and God the Father.

The second is that the denial of Mary’s perpetual virginity invariably leads, sooner or later, to a denial of the need for the Virgin Birth itself, and hence of Our Lord’s divinity. This plays itself out in several ways:

a) The denial of the fittingness and need for Mary to remain forever only the Theotokos is part and parcel of the notion that she was merely the accidental and indifferent means for bringing the Son of God into the world. For if Mary’s vocation as the Theotokos – the greatest divinely bestowed vocation in all history – is not singular and perpetual, then neither is any lesser vocation.

b) From the assertion that Mary did not have a unique calling to remain solely the Theotokos, and that she had other natural children by Joseph, it is a very small step to assert that the conception of Jesus was simply natural as well. If the miraculous uniqueness of his birth can be denied, why not the miraculous uniqueness of his conception as well?

(This step was already taken by the heretical revision in the Episcopal Church 1979 Book of Common Prayer, where in the Nicene Creed the phrase “by the Holy Spirit” was changed to “by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Some of the proponents of the revision stated afterwards that their aim was to accommodate people who rejected the Virgin Birth and believed that Joseph was Jesus’ natural father. As the late Dr. Peter Toon pointed out, “My cat has kittens by the power of the Holy Spirit, but only Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit himself as a person.” Another Anglican priest told me that he became convinced of Mary’s perpetual virginity when he realized from encounters with modern revisionist heresies that “every attack upon the divinity of Our Lord begins with an attack upon his mother.”)

The perpetual virginity of Mary is thus profoundly and inextricably intertwined with the divinity of her son as also being the Son of God. The singularity of Mary as uniquely set apart to be the Theotokos is the fitting – even necessary – counterpart of Jesus as uniquely set apart to be the incarnate God-man. The uniqueness of the latter requires the uniqueness of the former.

In addition, there is the unanimous witness of the patristic church regarding Mary’s perpetual virginity. Suggestions that Mary had natural children by Joseph are mentioned only in order to be rejected as foolish or blasphemous speculations of the misguided and heretics. Whatever one may think about particular speculative details (such as intact parturition), the agreement on the basic fact itself is universal, and extended from them through the medieval scholastics to all the major magisterial Reformers. (It is disturbing to see the evangelical co-authors of the newly published “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” statement on Mary admit to this united witness, only to blithely set it all aside and declare this to be an “adiaphorus teaching.”)

Finally, to deal with some miscellaneous points.

1) Contrary to the common canard, the emphasis on Mary’s perpetual virginity is not the result of some peculiar or morbid obsession, or belief that all sex is somehow dirty or demeaning. In addition to what has already been explained, there is another reason for the emphasis. Rightly used, sexual relations between husband and wife are a great good – one of the greatest goods, given that it enacts sacramentally the mystical union of Christ and His Church. But sometimes one good is given up for the sake of pursuing another and greater good. Jesus, Mary, and St. Paul all remained virgins, not because sexual intercourse is bad, but because giving up sexual relations and earthly marriage enabled them to devote themselves to serving God in extraordinary ways according to their unique vocations. Moreover, because of the very strength and intensity of the sexual drive, the chaste renunciation of its exercise for the sake of a greater good is an exceptional sign of spiritual self-discipline, self-sacrifice, and humiliation, and hence particularly worthy of admiration even by those not called to make the same sacrifice. That this is not intended to denigrate those who marry is borne out by the church father who said: “Virginity is a higher state than marriage, but the virgin is not therefore more pure than the married woman.”

2) As mentioned above, virginity is physical as well as moral. James K. fails to distinguish two different aspects of “physical” – activity and state vs. structure. A hymen can indeed be torn by e.g. exertion rather than sexual intercourse, but sexual penetration is a physical activity and state, and not just a moral state. That said, it is likely that the stress laid by the patristic fathers upon intact parturition, while theologically appropriate in a symbolic sense, was ground in good part upon the general belief that an intact hymen was a necessary correlative of being a virgin. Thus intact parturition is strictly speaking not a necessary concomitant of Mary’s perpetual virginity – though I see no great need to cavil against its possibility, and the imagery invoked by the fathers provides a fully satisfactory explanation of its fittingness.

3) The perpetual virginity of Mary differs from the other chief Marian dogmas mentioned here – the Immaculate Conception and Assumption – in having a universal patristic witness as to its soteriological import. The other two arose much later and had no consensual agreement among the fathers (or even the medieval scholastics). Thus opposition to the other two doctrines has a very different and far more defensible basis.

My own disagreement with the RCC regarding these is not one of a flat rejection of these doctrines – I understand e.g. the theological rationale for the Immaculate Conception as uniquely providing to Mary antecedently (in view of her unique vocation to be the Theotokos) the total sanctification that all other men receive subsequently – but rather that it cannot be a belief dogmatically required as essential to the faith because it fails to fulfill the Vincentian canon. Rather than objecting to these later doctrines “depending upon too high a view of Tradition,” it objects that they are not truly part of the Tradition at all. (A side note: as always, one must distinguish between Tradition as the universal mind of the Church regarding the understanding of revelation according to the Vincentian canon, and “traditions” as beliefs or customs peculiar to particular times, places, or schools of theological thought.) To put the matter a bit differently, the disagreement here is over the nature of the Petrine Office and its authority to define the Tradition; the disagreement thus devolves from the Marian doctrines themselves to the nature of the Church.

I hope this is of some help in addressing questions that have arisen regarding the importance of the perpetual virginity of Mary. For my part, I believe it is an absolutely essential bulwark to the defense of the Incarnation, and oppose any rejection or weakening of it.

[Bill R]

Your "learned Protestant friend" is unlike any Protestant I've ever known, David. Perhaps there are advantages to being "unlearned."

In the interests of ecumenical charity, I think it's best I keep my opinions on the above column to myself. I would only repeat what I said above: "I read several books on Mary years ago, both theological and practical, and found that Marian issues drove me away from, not toward, the older churches."

I respectfully suggest that we move on to issues on which we can be united.

[Denyse O'Leary]

Unbelievers smirk? Unbelievers smirk at the existence of human consciousness and claim that our brains are "shaped for fitness, not for truth".

Anyone conscious enough to read their nonsense must know it is not true.

And if our brains are shaped only for fitness, not truth, why should anyone believe THEM?

So why worry whether they doubt Catholic doctrines about Mary?

[Margaret]

Your suggestion is well taken, Bill R. In all things, charity.

[Louise]

A fabulous discussion and a wonderful review of an extraordinary book. Thank you both, David and Tony.

Wouldn't a discussion of Our Lady's prophetic words "All generations shall call me blessed." be interesting! Note, esp., the verb "shall", which is a third person imperative, not merely a simple future tense.

[David]

Irenaeus: "I certainly miss the days when we'd all just bash libs together. That was much more fun."

Oh, I dunno. That can be fun too, but in some ways I prefer arguing about the issues that divide us here. Mere sniping is not productive, of course, but the level of discourse here is generally quite high, and that means I actually learn things — both more about things I already believe, but also more about how and why other people don't believe the same things. And I have to say, the more I learn, the more I have come to see that we are actually much closer together than I would have thought.

Comments may get a little sarcastic from time to time, but I think most of us aren't so thin-skinned as to prefer a fearful politeness at the cost of genuine discussion. (So go ahead, call me a heretic, I can take it! If I really am one, how would I know if nobody calls me on it? Besides, who here is going to object to following the example of the Church Fathers?!?)

[Bill R]

"That can be fun too, but in some ways I prefer arguing about the issues that divide us here."

Given the right audience, David, you're certainly correct. Of course, out here in MC-land, we don't select the audience: it selects us. Because Marian doctrines don't go to the center of the faith as I understand it I could never call you a heretic, or even contemplate that. Yet such teachings are clearly divisive and therefore, in my opinion, best avoided, at least in an ecumenical context. Of course I understand that since at least two Marian doctrines are now de fide, you really can't avoid deeming them to be part of the faith as you understand it.

It seems this would be more troublesome to you than it would be to me. From my minimalist stance, I can have fellowship with any number of Christians who have opinions different from, or in addition to, my own, as long as that which distinguishes us is not pressed upon me as something I must believe in order to be addressed as a Christian. I too am not at all thin-skinned about being thought of as insufficiently Christian, or just plain thick, since I often have that opinion of myself in any event. I draw the line only at being cast out from the fellowship entirely. And as well I understand that my non-acceptance (it's much too strong to call it rejection) of the Marian doctrines leaves you with options as well: their acceptance is only required of me if I wish to become a Roman Catholic and not if I'm content to be a plain ol' evangelical Protestant. But still, I would think that my non-acceptance would be more troubling to you than your acceptance is to me.

[Charles R. Williams]

Re: virginity in parturition. Most of us would not understand the relevance of giving birth to a child to one's status as a virgin. Perhaps, virginity in parturition simply is another way to say that Mary did not incur ritual uncleanness in giving birth (see Lev. 12). Possibly the notion of uncleanness associated with childbirth was present in some form or other in Mediterranean cultures of the Church Fathers. Perhaps, there were Christian rituals that dealt with these feelings or perceptions. Emphasizing Mary's virginity in parturition then is a way of emphasizing the pure, unadulterated blessing of her birthgiving - that is, the absence of the shadow of parental concupiscence, ancestral sin, physical pain and death that attends human birth after the fall.

[Charles R. Williams]

Devotion to Mary is universal among Christians who understand the full implications of the communion of saints. We truly are a family. Mary is truly our mother in the order of grace. How can we assemble with the angels, the saints and our Lord at Sunday liturgy and not greet our mother with profound affection! And who would speak her name and mention sin in the same breath!

Two thousand years of dogmatic theologizing rest on this profound and universal sensus fidelium.

[David Gray.]

>And who would speak her name and mention sin in the same breath!

The scriptures tell us Christ was without sin.