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Mary's Perpetual Virginity: Does the Notion of In Partu Virginity Require as Catholic Dogma, a Miraculous, Non-Natural Childbirth?
[24 September 2008]
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2...oes-
notion.html
I see little reason why the process was not a natural birth, with cervical dilation, placenta, umbilical cord, and all. The moral of the story is that Mary never had sex, out of deference to the gift God gave her. Whether Jesus was squeezed out of her uterus or translocated out of it or used a wormhole has nothing to do with that. Enclosed gardens and shut gates and sealed fountains - same analogy works either way. She didn't have sex.
Isaiah 66:7 - contrast this with Rev 12:2. Both can be applied to Mary; Rev 12 is better known as being a symbol of Mary, and the Church. Are the labour pains only those of the Church, and does that part of the analogy NOT apply to Mary? I doubt it.
Luke 2:7 - if the cleaning up after delivery is not mentioned, does that mean it never happened? Is there really an indication in the text that there was no time between "she brought forth" and "wrapped him"? I doubt Luke would have thought it necessary to give a description of the cleaning process, had it occurred, so its absence is not remarkable.
Luke 2:22-30 - is there really an absence of a reference to taking away the uncleanness of a post-partum mother? Verse 24 refers to Lev 12:8 - "And if she be not able to bring a lamb, then she shall bring two turtles, or two young pigeons; the one for the burnt offering, and the other for a sin offering: and the priest shall make an atonement for her, and she shall be clean." Turtles = doves, not reptiles. This chapter is all about ritual post-partum purification, not about the dedication of a new-born.
Luke 2:22: "And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished ..." I think the author of the Catholics United for the Faith article missed those words. Yes, they visited the temple to dedicate their first-born, "and" (verse 24) to offer the sacrifice in accordance to the requirements of the prevailing Canon Law governing post-partum purification.
The arguments I've seen that say Mary was freed from original sin, so she was freed from the consequences linked to it such as labour pains don't quite make sense to me. Certainly not those that extend to her never getting sick. And among Protestants, certainly not similar ones about Jesus never getting sick, never grazing his knee when he fell. We can even remove all genetic defects, if we like, and have Jesus' L-gulonolactone oxidase gene was functional and, unlike guinea pigs and all primates, he could synthesise his own vitamin C and didn't need it in his diet. Maybe Jesus and Mary were immune to the starvation that would result if they stopped eating. (For those who believe God the Father has intestines - and there are many I've met who do - what exactly does he use them for?)
If he translocated, where did the placenta go, if there was one? Did he have a navel? At what point in all this exclusion from normal human experiences would Jesus (and Mary) stop being human?
On the other side o
Part 2 of my comment:
On the other side of the coin, we have statements about Mary being a virgin before the birth, during the birth, and after the birth.
Being a virgin before birth can easily refer to not having sex prior to the birth. Same with after the birth. During the birth, if we apply the same logic, it means she didn't have sex during labour. A bit daft. It could be taken two ways - he did indeed translocate, or something similar, or it is simply an expression indicating the complete timeline being without sex, and not specifically discussing the absence of sex during labour. The way St Augustine phrases it excludes sex while breastfeeding as well ... which may indicate the entire period, or only when he was actively drinking. But to me it sounds more like a statement about the complete timeline as a virgin rather than a statement about the absence of sex during labour.
Nothing prevented God from translocating Jesus out of Mary's uterus onto the hay next to her. But it's not necessary for the completeness of the meaning of the dogma of Mary's perpetual virginity, and in my view, it only complicates things by making Jesus' birth less than normal in an extreme way. As Pope Leo said, it was an unusual birth, but by bringing Mary's hymen into the picture, on my opinion it only detracts from the focus of the events. Her virginity was not about a body part, it was about whether or not she chose to remain without sex in response to God giving her a child without the usual mechanism of sex. And more - faithfulness, other symbolism.
And what sort of message are we giving out about faithfulness if we say virginity is about a hymen? What about the small percentage of women born without one? Were they born without virginity?
If we are meant to have a dogma that speaks to us about Mary's anatomy, that's fine. In my opinion, the dogma is not about that, and I find nothing in any form of wording, biblical, papal, or otherwise, to suggest that anatomy is included.
That it is not about anatomy was part of my post already. That's the point that Ott makes.
A miraculous birth is not just about the hymen. We are allowed to have different opinions about it, but I think we have to at least respect the more traditional and patristic view, as we would any position that was held by most of those great men. Not knowing as much about biology as we do was not their fault.
I could go either way on this. I'm inclined to go with the natural view, just as I believe that Mary died. But God could have done it either way, and there are good arguments for both positions.
The Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth are odd and unexpected enough, so prima facie a miraculous birth is no more implausible. There are already two miracles in the Immaculate Conception and Jesus' conception. So an additional one at birth is not altogether implausible at all (before we even get to the arguments yay and nay).
You seem to almost look down on it as if it were a downright silly idea (perhaps I am reading you wrongly). I don't see it as silly at all. There just isn't definite information from the Church to make it a dogma within a dogma.
Yip ... I know. I just think it needs emphasising. (Maybe it's because I object to customs in Africa inspecting a woman's hymen prior to marriage, and all the erroneous conclusions that can result, along with using that to determine whether or not the full price must be paid.) I am just strongly against virginity (whether Mary or modern women) being defined by a hymen. Similarly with implanting an embryo (or artificial insemination) into a woman who has not had sex - it wouldn't make it a virgin birth like Jesus had. Technically we should maybe call his incarnation a virginal conception, because with modern technology, virgin births can (and I think have) occurred.
Silly? Well, as expressed by ancient Christians who didn't study anatomy, no. As a potential part of a dogma, no. It's still on the right side of the silly line. What is silly to me is the direction it could lead - taking away more and more of Jesus' and Mary's humanity by avoiding pain and infections and bruises and defective vitamin C synthesis ... and the idea of a gross bloody placenta. The only idea I haven't come across is the vitamin C synthesis bit - that I made up to take it further. I still need to test it out on the "Jesus never got flu" crowd. And there are plenty of Christians out there who claim that Jesus did not have Mary's DNA - partly to avoid the Mother of God classification for Mary, but also to avoid genetic contamination for Jesus (ideas like original sin is genetic, our genes are imperfect, etc).
I find the idea amusing that pre-fall, lions were vegetarian. I've even had people tell me that they didn't have sharp teeth and claws, and that they grazed like sheep and didn't have a carnivore's digestive tract. I just haven't had someone tell me they looked like sheep.
Yes, it's possible. But I don't believe Mary had an abnormal delivery, and I believe she died before the assumption. If we take away Mary's labour pains, flu and grazes for her and Jesus, and then we claim that Jesus didn't have genetic defects, and then we name the genetic defects (like vitamin C synthesis) that he didn't have ... it's as if we need to turn him into Achilles without the heel. We don't need to turn him into a god by removing what we see as "weak" aspects of our human lives. He is already God, and always has been, and he doesn't need dehumanisation from our side to achieve that.
It has nothing to do with making Jesus more or less human. It's simply a matter of how God chose to do it. The Nestorians also thought that the orthodox Catholics were making Jesus less human in denouncing their errors.
The Immaculate Conception wasn't technically required, either, but rather, it was "fitting." Who's to say that a miraculous birth is not also fitting?
We can't base our opposition on emotional antipathies to how certain people might abuse an idea or draw conclusions from it that don't follow.
The perpetual virginity of Mary is possible, but not likely.
Orthodox Catholic NT scholar John Meier (a priest at University of Notre Dame) has good arguments against the teaching in volume 1 of his book A Marginal Jew. This book has the impramateur [sic].
-J Prot
That God may have chosen to do it that way, and that it may have been fitting, is quite true. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on dehumanising. For me, if Jesus is to be like us in all things but sin, then he had the same experiences as we do, the same trials and sufferings - flu included. (And I know you're not arguing against him having flu. To me it just includes Mary and a natural birth.) Catholics were not making Jesus less human - they were uniting what Nestorianism split in two without subtracting from either humanity or divinity. It could be argued that turning Jesus into Achilles without the heel does not affect his human nature, only his human experiences. So your point is valid. And maybe I am trying to de-deify Jesus' humanity too much. I just don't think so ... but I think we agree all of this is open to debate. My kittens certainly think I am infallible though 
Since disease, and death are effects of original sin, there's no reason why Jesus would have had to catch the flu or any other disease while on earth. He could have condescended to partake of all such human frailties, but there's nothing necessarily contrary to the doctrine of the Incarnation about Jesus never getting sick. He came to restore human nature, after all, and to show what human nature was always meant to be from the start: it's not clear whether that restoration of the human body was delayed until the resurrection or began when He was virginally conceived.
Now tell me that odds or possibility of God becoming truelly man, jeb.
And this has anything to do with a correct exegesis of Jesus' "brothers" in the NT?
Orthodox Catholic NT scholar John Meier (a priest at University of Notre Dame) has good arguments against the teaching in volume 1 of his book A Marginal Jew. This book has the impramateur [sic].
The perpetual virginity is a dogma of the Catholic faith, so Meier's speculations that the dogma might be false prove that he is hardly an orthodox Catholic. It is also well known among faithful Catholics that the coin of the imprimatur has been greatly cheapened in recent decades. Meier nuances his discussion enough to get a pass, but even so his arguments are rehashed and invalid.
Actually, Meier seems to pretty clearly deny it.
I think even Raymond Brown, a scholar of strict orthodoxy, said that Meier's arguments were quite strong.
Raymond Brown is strictly orthodox? You gotta be kidding, right?
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2...oricism-
of.html
Man, we have some strange examples of "orthodox Catholics" around here, as of late.
Actually, Meier seems to pretty clearly deny it.
Yes, he seems to, but he seems also to propose his heretical arguments in such a way that he could manage to get someone equally as obtuse as he to give him a worthless imprimatur. Nuance or not, you can't help but think Father Meier is at least a material heretic, as all all those who deny the Christian doctrine of the perpetual virginity.
I think even Raymond Brown, a scholar of strict orthodoxy, said that Meier's arguments were quite strong.
If Father Brown was "strictly orthodox," then I'm a three-eared African elephant.
So, besides the fact that Meier's book erroneously was granted an imprimatur, and beside your contention that his arguments are good, do you have anything substantial to contribute? I mean, would you care to defend Meier's actual arguments?
So, there's another possible physical interpretation of "virgin" that hasn't been explored here. That is of a woman not having experienced an orgasm. There are certainly cases of women experiencing an orgasm during birth -- there's a reference to it in the "Bradley Method" of childbirth (see the book by Susan McCutcheon-Rosegg). There are also cases of women experiencing orgasm as a result of nursing. (I think I read this in "The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy," which is a book my wife asked me to read during her first pregnancy.) This provides some possible context for Augustine's mention of her virginity during nursing.
What I'm not sure of is any contemporary (i.e. 1st century) references to virginity being associated with the female orgasm. Was the female orgasm even mentioned in the literature of the time?
This is how I have personally interpreted the "in partu" part of the doctrine, but I realize I've got no historical support for it.
I had previously mocked the "translation" theory of Christ's birth as coming from a kind of semi-docetist denial of the incarnation, or a hyper-puritan embarrassment of anything sexual.
Hans Urs von Bathasar -- I think it was in "The Christian State of Life" -- gave me a somewhat different perspective on this, in a manner that is consonant with JPII's Theology of the Body, and his meditation on the state of the body before the fall. Urs vonB points out that Eve, prior to the fall, was fully human, including being fertile. Thus, it must be that it was possible for her, prior to the Fall, to give birth in a manner that did not involve pain and suffering. He gets rather speculative at this point, but he postulates that indeed it was possible, although not exercised, for Adam and Eve, prior to the Fall, to "know" each other in a sexual manner that would have been fertile, yet left them both virgins as before. Exactly how this would be physically manifested, he admits we cannot directly imagine. Adam and Eve, then, while being fruitful and multiplying, would have also remained perpetual virgins as well.
At any rate, that the blessed Virgin, conceived without stain of original sin, would have manifested this same ability, at least in childbirth, as that originally intended for Eve, is sensible and fitting if not necessary.
While Urs VonB was sufficiently speculative in his meditations to leave me unconvinced. It at least let me understand that one might hold to the "translation" theory of Christ's birth without it being motivated from a semi-docetist rejection of the body, or a hyper-puritan anti-sexuality sensibility.
DelRayVA, those speculations are absurd and, indelicate, even indecent. The ancient Christians were unanimous in their understanding that Mary's perpetual virginity meant she was intacta anatomically before conception, throughout pregnancy, and remained so during and after birth and until the end of her life on earth, and remains so forever in heaven. The only time they spoke of virginity in a non-physical sense was, for example, in such language as we find in the Apocalypse -- also, when Christian virgins were raped by pagans, I believe that was not regarded as violating their chastity since it was without consent. The unanimous sense of the Fathers is that Mary is literally a virgina intacta who never, ever engaged in sexual intercourse and whose anatomy remained undamaged despite her giving birth to Jesus. Many of the Fathers speculated that Jesus was born in some pecular way, like sprouted out of her side (a Buddhist myth, by the way), but however Jesus was born, Catholics are sure that it left Mary intact.
Whoops, left my name off that comment!
Dear Jordanes,
Please forgive me for being obtuse. I have pondered this, and I can't imagine which part of my posts, or even which post, you are referring to when you call these speculations "absurd," "indelicate," and "indecent." Perhaps you could give a specific example of each.
Let me be clear, I do not doubt in any way the perpetual virginity of Mary. Like Dave, I am trying to understand what is meant by "In Partu," in this context.
I find the equation of "Virginity" with "Intact Hymen" to be unhelpful at best. I think the point of Dave's original post was precisely that we do not have to make that equation. Doing my best to think with the mind of the Church, I don't see any obligation to hold that the meaning of "perpetual Virginity" is that Mary's hymen remained intact through birth.
So, what part of my posts was "absurd?" What part was "indelicate" beyond your own discussion of the Blessed Mother's hymen? What part was "indecent?" What part of Dave's post do you disagree with, in order to make the assertions you make? I don't intend these questions rhetorically, but sincerely. I just don't get what you mean. Please explain.
I have pondered this, and I can't imagine which part of my posts, or even which post, you are referring to when you call these speculations "absurd," "indelicate," and "indecent."
I mean your "orgasm" speculation. I'm dumbfounded anyone would have not only thought up such an interpretation of the Perpetual Virginity but brought it up for discussion in a public forum.
I find the equation of "Virginity" with "Intact Hymen" to be unhelpful at best.
It was, however, what the ancients meant by "virginity," and the Fathers did apply that meaning, the obvious meaning, to the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity.
The doctrine does not require a miraculous, non-natural birth, but that doesn't mean Mary was not a virgina intacta following her giving birth to Jesus. It could have been a natural, "vaginal" delivery and yet have caused her body no damage and inflicted no labor pains upon her. But there's just no way for us to tell exactly how Jesus was delivered, and such discussions take us into areas that we should not, out of care to protect Our Mother's honor and dignity, be delving into. It is enough to know that the majority opinion, the traditional view, is that Christ's birth was of a miraculous nature, and leave it at that. I don't see any way to define the matter any further, nor is it especially edifying to wonder about possible further definitions.
Dear Jordanes,
Well, I understand that you think it is indelicate or indecent to discuss the association of orgasm with virginity, especially in relation to the Blessed Mother. I don't agree, but I do understand. What I don't understand is how you can find that indelicate or indecent, yet do not shy from discussion of the intactness, or lack thereof, of her hymen. I see no meaningful aesthetic distinction between the two discussions. (Matters of delicacy or decency, in this instance, being questions of aesthetics.)
On the topic of being absurd, I think the term is a little strong, but I confess that there is not any patristic evidence I can cite in support.
I call speculations about the association between the intactness of a woman's hymen and virginity "unhelpful at best." I say this because I have found myself puzzling over the concept of "virginity." What, exactly, is lost when one "loses virginity?" Clearly, the human experience is that there is a distinction between one who is a virgin, and one who is not. I have yet to find any definition that expresses the difference in experience in a way that answers more questions than it raises.
I suggest you go back and read Dave's original post. I think he does a pretty good job of explaining why the perpetual virginity of Mary may not refer to the intactness of her hymen. It simply is not clear to what it does refer.
By the way, how do you read Revelation 12:2? What does it mean to you?
Thanks
No, DelRayVA, it is indisputably indecent for someone to speculate about the Blessed Mother as you have done. In the past I was too casual and indiscreet regarding this matter, and I am not going to transgress the bounds of propriety in that area any longer.
I also suggest you go back and read Dave's original post. You should also note that Dave only mentioned the word "hymen" after another commenter here brought it up. You then continued that. But I absolutely decline to speculate about what exactly Mary's physical intactness involved. It's simply nobody's business but hers and God's. This is a discussion of Mariology, not gynaecology. All we know, and all we can know, is that the Catholic tradition is that she is a virgina intacta perpetually, and that somehow the birth of Jesus did not change that. I couldn't care less about the precise anatomical details that might pertain to that doctrine, nor is it meet to inquire further into such things which the Lord has shrouded in godly modesty.
If you wish to understand the concept of virginity, I'd recommend the old Catholic Encyclopedia, here:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/...then/
15458a.htm
It should help elucidate Rev. 12:2.
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