–All owe thee their service – Virgin and Mother of God – who ever prayest for us – and thou makest us live.
–O bright virginity – fountain of every virtue! – cease not to grant health – to all Christendom.
Some Catholic exegetes are denying that Mary was ever virgin. Although they admit the virginal conception of Jesus –at best–, according to them, the Virgin was not a virgin. At least, so they assure us, that is what a scientific, philological-historical-critical examination of the question confirms. Rather, she was the mother of a large family. This thesis has not provoked an avalanche of vigorous reproofs from Catholic exegetes and theologians, for most of them abide by what is “academically correct” at the present time: allowing everyone to express his thought freely, without publicly combating it.
Vittorio Messori, on the contrary, in chapter 50 of his work Ipotesi su Maria (Madrid, LibrosLibres 2012, 3rd ed., pp. 425-441), gives a good synthesis of Catholic exegesis on this grave question. In what follows I shall make a synthesis of his synthesis, interweaving his considerations and my own. But let us begin by pointing out, by way of example, a Catholic exegete who denies the historical-evangelical foundation of the Church’s faith in the perpetual virginity of Mary.
John P. Meier (1942-) is a Catholic priest, professor of New Testament at the Catholic University of America in Washington, professor of N. T. at Notre Dame University in Indiana, former president of the Catholic Biblical Association, editor of the journal Catholic Biblical Quarterly. One of the most influential authors in current biblical studies of the Catholic world.
In the nineties of the past century he published in several volumes an enormous work, translated into the principal languages, titled Jesus: a Marginal Jew (Jesús, un judío marginal, published in Spanish by Edit. Verbo Divino, Estella, Spain; also in digital edition. On the flap of the cover it is said that “he is, probably, the most eminent biblical scholar of his generation.” The original imprimatur (25-VI-1991) was granted by Msgr. Patrick Sheridan, then vicar general of the diocese of New York; in 2001 made auxiliary Bishop of the same diocese.
This eminent and so prestigious author, treating of “the brothers and sisters of Jesus” cited in the Gospels, writes (underlinings mine) that, “if –prescinding from faith and from the subsequent teaching of the Church– the historian or exegete is called to express a judgment on the New Testament and on the patristic texts we have examined, considered simply as historical sources, the most probable opinion is that the brothers and sisters of Jesus are true brothers”. In other places of the work this “most probable opinion” is given as a certainty. In this way Meier, without denying the Catholic faith in the perpetual virginity of Mary, eliminates its historical and exegetical foundations; more still, he considers it most probable that the Gospel denies what the faith of the Church affirms. And like him, so many other Catholic exegetes and theologians…
Rationalist exegesis, prescinding by system from faith in its investigations, does not fear to reach conclusions contrary to the faith of the Church. It began in modern times in the Protestant world, logically demanded by liberal theology. And concretely in relation to the Virgin Mary, both liberal Protestant exegesis and theology –Lutherans, Anglicans and others– have had a clear tendency against Catholic Marian devotion, and consequently have taken special pains to deny to the Mother of Jesus her highest dogmatic and devotional titles, one of which is, and not the least important, that of ever Virgin.
The Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968), one of the most prestigious of the twentieth century, although distancing himself from liberal Protestant theology, and creating his own, maintains the anti-Marian allergy of the Protestants. Referring to Lourdes, he wrote: “that grotto is the place where it becomes most evident what Catholic mariology is: a tumor of authentic christology.” And in a friendly letter to a Catholic colleague he said: “that mariology of yours, which must be eliminated at the root.”
Nevertheless, at the beginning of the so-called “Reformation,” it acknowledges the perpetual virginity of Mary. Both Luther, and Calvin and Zwingli, profess with all zeal that truth of the faith. With his habitual fierceness of expression, Luther considers “madmen and villains” the few heretics who denied this faith. And later, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the confession of faith of the Calvinists still affirms that “Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and that she remained a Virgin before and after the birth.”
On the contrary, the heirs of the fathers of the Reformation, assuming the rationalist naturalism of the Enlightenment, generate liberal Protestant exegesis. Basing themselves on it, they have long affirmed as an indisputable fact that Mary was a Jewish mother of a family, who had at least four sons and two daughters. Maurice Goguel, a Reformed rationalist, writes: “the problem of the brothers of the Lord does not exist for history, but only for Catholic dogmatics.” Giuseppe Barbaglio (1934-2007), a Catholic biblical scholar, cites and makes his own that phrase of Goguel (Jesús, hebreo de Galilea. Investigación histórica. Ed. Secretariado Trinitario, Salamanca 2003, pp. 129-130). Joseph Bornkamm, a Lutheran, declares: “solely Catholic (or Orthodox) doctrinal conveniences, not the documents at our disposal, have made of these brothers half-brothers or cousins, in order to defend the perpetual virginity of Mary.” Well then, such a heresy –and such an exegetical error– has gone on infecting not a few Catholic professors, “free of confessional prejudices,” habitually followers of the most notable liberal Protestant exegetes.
It is worth noting, in passing, that all the Christian confessions which follow in exegesis an extreme rationalist historical-criticism follow an evident path of extinction. The evangelicals, rather tempted by biblical fundamentalism, want to know nothing of them, still less the Eastern Orthodox. They are degenerate Christian communities, which accept abortion, contraception, euthanasia, divorce, homosexuality, the presbyteral or episcopal priesthood of women, sometimes acknowledged lesbians, and they are the ones who produce the most aberrant exegeses, to the taste of the author and of the fashionable worldly ideologies… These Christian communities, not being assisted by the apostolic succession, are in fact led not so much by their pastors as by their theologians (much more valued in Protestantism than the pastors), and they have shown in our time an almost infallible instinct for adhering successively to all the worst errors: national socialism, anarchism, fascist authoritarianism, extreme feminism, sexual revolution, unlimited pacifism, pseudo-religious ecologism, permanent conformism with the cultural model predominant in the world: in education, customs, politics, art or whatever. They live Romans 12:1-3 intensely, but in reverse.
It seems incredible that those who began with “Sola Scriptura” should have ended up practically “Sine Scriptura”. But it is perfectly understandable: given the free examination of the Scriptures, having ground them down in modern times with the most destructive analytical exegeses of the divine Word, and having denied the historicity of almost the whole Bible, of the Gospels too, they were left without a Bible. These confessions sometimes survive poorly in confessional Protestant States, sustained by the ecclesiastical taxes collected by the political Administration. In some cities, the theological Faculty subsists, but every form of worship in the churches has ceased, because they were left empty. Their days are numbered.
And the local Catholic Churches that are more or less infected by their spirit are going the same way toward extinction or toward an extreme reduction. Meanwhile the true Catholic Church and Orthodoxy subsist, and the fundamentalist Evangelicals grow. I beg pardon for this digression, and return to our theme.
* * *
Philology rejects the objections against the perpetual virginity of Mary. At least three of the Gospels are surely Greek translations of originals written in Hebrew or Aramaic, in which semitisms abound, which seems not to be sufficiently taken into account by historical-critical exegesis with regard to the “brothers” of Jesus. As Vittorio Messori points out,
“behind the Greek of the Gospels adelphòs, brother, lies the Aramaic aha, or the Hebrew ‘ah, which can mean at the same time blood brother, half-brother, cousin or nephew, but also disciple, ally, member of the same tribe and even ‘neighbor’ in general, or of the same city or nation. Even today there is no term in modern Hebrew to distinguish brother from cousin, and it is necessary to resort to expressions such as ‘son of the same mother (or of the same father)’. [And he alludes to various places in the OT and the NT]… Precisely for this reason, the evangelists –or the translators from Aramaic into Greek– did not hesitate to use the words ‘brother of Jesus’, sure of not being misinterpreted by anyone. So it still is in the East: neither does modern Arabic, like present-day Hebrew, have a term to distinguish brothers from cousins; and in Africa and in all traditional cultures” (p. 436).
Brother is in those cultures “the son of my mother (or of my father).” According to this, what is a problem for Western biblical scholars is not one in the vast zones of the Eastern or African languages. Although Greek has a proper term to signify “cousin” (anepsios; e.g., Col 4:10), even the Septuagint hardly ever employs it, preferring to use the word adelphòs, since the two terms can be used indifferently (e.g., “our brother Tobias,” Tob 7:2). But let us examine the question in some concrete scenes of the Gospels.
At the wedding of Cana, according to the account of St. John (2:1-12), reference is made to the brothers of Jesus. “After this [the celebration of the wedding, Jesus] went down to Capharnaum, he and his mother, his brethren and [in Greek kai] his disciples; and they remained there but a few days” (2:12). And examining this text, the biblical scholar José Miguel García Pérez (Madrid, 1951-), professor at the Faculty of Theology San Dámaso (Madrid), writes:
“The Greek particle kai textually translates an Aramaic waw which frequently corresponds to the English copulative conjunction and. But, in this case, the waw is explicative and its English equivalent is ‘therefore, that is, in other words‘. In the Greek of the Gospels the cases in which this Greek conjunction takes on such a meaning are not rare.” For example: “The chief priests, the elders, and the scribes and (kai) the whole council” (Mk 15:1). This translation is improper, for the text really says: “The chief priests, the elders and the scribes, that is, the whole council,” since, in effect, those cited were the ones who composed it. In the same way the aforementioned text of Cana must be correctly translated thus: “After this he went down to Capharnaum, he and his mother and his brethren, that is, his disciples; and they remained there but a few days.” The philological argument is reinforced by the concrete circumstances: “If it were a matter of true brothers, it would be obvious to suppose a return to Nazareth, where they all had their home. If they go to Capharnaum, the city chosen by Jesus as the base for his work in Galilee, it is simply because his companions are neither brothers nor other relatives, but disciples. As a consequence, this verse of John specifies clearly who these ‘brothers’ really are.”
Around Jesus the master there forms a small spiritual clan, in which all are “brothers.” In this sense he says: “Who is my mother and my brethren? And looking round about on them who sat about him, he saith: Behold my mother and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of God, he is my brother, and my sister, and mother” (Mk 3:33).
That Mary “brought forth her firstborn son” (Lk 2:7) is a datum accepted even by the most critical. Therefore, if Jesus had had more brothers, sons of Mary, these would be younger brothers –four males and probably two girls, according to these exegetes–. The home of Nazareth would be full of children. It is not easy then to explain how St. Luke relates that Joseph and Mary, when Jesus was twelve years old, went up with him alone to Jerusalem on the annual pilgrimage, and remained the whole feast, some seven days. The evangelist even relates that “his parents went every year to Jerusalem, at the solemn day of the pasch” (2:41). When Jesus was twelve years old, how many more little brothers were there in the house of Nazareth? Is that annual pilgrimage compatible with the life of a mother of a large family, subject to successive pregnancies, with a home full of little children under twelve years of age? The pilgrimage entailed some two weeks of absence from the home. And moreover, it was not obligatory… Mary had only one son, Jesus.
Nor is it understood, knowing what was, in the social framework of Israel, the rigidity of the intrafamilial hierarchy and the absolute primacy recognized to the firstborn, how it is possible that the younger brothers should dare to seek out Jesus in order to compel him to return to his home (Mt 12:46-50). Those “brothers” were without doubt relatives of Jesus, and older than he.
Even more. The evangelists, concretely Matthew, who applied systematically to the various vicissitudes of the life of Jesus every prophetic anticipation of the Old Testament, would in no way have failed to cite in this scene that saying of the Psalm: “I am become a stranger to my brethren, and an alien to the sons of my mother” (69:9). But no; certainly, these who look with ill favor upon his public ministry are not for Jesus “sons of his mother, brothers” of blood; they are relatives. Jesus is the only son of Mary.
St. Joseph, it seems, died early, for already in the public ministry of Jesus, at the Cross and the Resurrection, he is not present. Therefore, when Mary was widowed, she did not remain alone with her small son in Nazareth, but rather, according to the norm and custom of her people, she joined her family, merging into it. The normal thing, then, is that all those outside considered “brothers and sisters” of Jesus the young people who lived with him in his new home.
Jesus, before dying, entrusts to St. John the custody of his most holy Mother. This so grave decision would make no sense if Mary were the mother of a good number of sons and daughters. We know that on the day of Pentecost, all the apostles are gathered together, persevering “with one mind in prayer, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren” (Acts 1:13-14). If these “brethren” here cited were “sons of Mary,” real brothers of Jesus, was it not the natural thing that these should be the ones to welcome their own mother into their house? And yet it was St. John who was favored: “and from that hour the disciple took her to his own” (Jn 19:27). Mary the virgin had only one son, conceived by the work of the Holy Spirit; the son who died on the Cross and rose again on the third day. She was ever virgin.
But let us say it clearly: all those arguments have no force whatever for one who denies, at least for the most part, the historicity of the Gospels. They have value for one who acknowledges the historicity of the words and deeds alluded to. But, for example, the last argument cited will have no force for one who, making a historical approach to Jesus, tells us that in reality we do not know the concrete events of Calvary. Concretely, “it seems fairly clear that the ‘dialogue’ of Jesus with his ‘mother’ and the ‘beloved disciple’ is a scene constructed by the gospel of John” (Pagola, Jesús, 10th ed., 418). With a similar arbitrariness, going on to deny successively the historicity of sayings and deeds reported by the evangelists, we are left without Gospels. And of course any debate on a question of exegesis is impossible, if one of the parties is disposed to reject the historicity of all those sayings or deeds that are contrary to its thought. There is nothing to be done.
Josef Blinzler (1910-1970), priest and professor of exegesis of the New Testament in Munich and in Passau, wrote on the question that occupies us a very valuable work, Die Brüder und Schwestern Jesu (Stuttgart 1967), translated into several languages (e.g., I fratelli e le sorelle di Gesù, Paideia 2011). And in it, with other authors, he sets forth several of the arguments I have just cited in favor of the perpetual virginity of Mary. He synthesizes his theses with these words:
“The so-called brothers and sisters of Jesus were cousins. For Simon and Jude the kinship came from their father Cleophas, who was a brother of St. Joseph and, like him, a descendant of David; the name of their mother is not known. The mother of James and Joses (Joseph) was a Mary, distinct from the mother of Jesus. She, or her husband, were related to the family of the Lord, but it is not possible to determine what kinship it was. There is some indication that the father of James and of Joses (Joseph) was of priestly or Levitical origin and that he was a brother of Mary,” etc. Since we cannot here enter into the detailed analysis of these questions, I shall cite other words of Blinzler of great value:
“We can demonstrate that the Catholic interpretation of the expression ‘brothers of the Lord’ is not aprioristic, is not an abstract defense of a dogma, but takes seriously into consideration the testimony of history, that is, of the New Testament and of the most ancient Tradition.” And he observes with sorrow that “if there is a difference in the way in which Protestant and Catholic exegesis present their positions, it consists in the fact that, on the Catholic side care is taken to take into consideration the arguments of the opposing side, in order to reply; whereas the Protestant authors consider it superfluous to lose more time and to proceed to the comparison.”
They say that “love is blind.” A great falsehood. The more one loves a person the better one knows him. Bad love indeed is blind. But, for example, a husband, if he loves his wife much and well, “knows” with great ease her sorrows, what gladdens her, her preferences, her fears, he grasps at once her states of mind. For this reason, the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy, because they love the Mother of Jesus so very much, and above all by the grace of God, know Mary very well, both in exegesis and in theology and mysticism. They know with most certain lucidity that the sublime gift of virginity, which God grants to so many Christian men and women, has been received in infinite and perpetual fullness by the Most Holy Virgin Mary, blessed among all women. They know that her most sacred virginal womb conceived the eternal Son of God by the work of the Holy Spirit, and that the Only-begotten of the Father was the Only-begotten of blessed Mary. They know with absolute certainty that never did divine Providence dispose that from that ineffably sacred womb there should be born, by the work of man, other human beings.
Liberal Protestant exegesis in general, but especially in what concerns Mary, frequently looks with contempt upon the argumentations of Catholic authors. It considers them backward and miracle-mongers, and takes hardly any account of their studies and arguments. It thinks that, because of our fanatical Marianism, we are fixed on trivially gynecological questions about the virginity of Mary. It thinks also that we are obliged to subject exegesis to the dogmatic teaching of the Church –when in reality it is liberal Protestant exegesis, so erroneous, so maleficent, that is captive to its naturalist and anti-Marian prejudices–. These sons of the Reformation fail to intuit the mystery of Mary, the bond so profound and coherent that exists between immaculate conception, virginal divine maternity, uniqueness of grace “among all women,” absolute totality of her perpetual virginal consecration to the Lord, in soul and body.
* * *
Let us finally confess the faith of the Church in the perpetual virginity of Mary. The Catechism says: “The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity… And the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “ever-virgin”” (499). “Against this doctrine the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus (cf. Mk 3:31-55; 6:3; 1 Cor 9:5; Gal 1:19). 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’ (Mt 13:55), are the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ (cf. Mt 27:56), whom St. Matthew significantly calls ‘the other Mary’ (Mt 28:1). They are close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression (cf. Gen 13:8; 14:16; 29:15; etc.)” (ib. 500). Therefore, “Jesus is Mary’s only son” (ib. 501).
Never did those allusions to “brothers and sisters” of Jesus make the early Church doubt the perpetual virginity of Mary. All knew that in the Eastern languages those terms signified not only carnal brothers, but relatives in general, the members of one same great family. And when a certain Helvidius, around 380, alleges that Joseph and Mary had had many children, he affirms it in order to combat the superiority of monastic celibacy over marriage, and to justify his thesis. St. Jerome answers him, the highest exegete of the age, a perfect connoisseur of Hebrew and Greek, with the treatise Adversus Helvidium de perpetua virginitate Mariæ (383), in which he demonstrates, with argumentations that remain valid, that the aforesaid “brothers and sisters” were cousins of Jesus, not sons of Mary. The teaching of the great Doctor of the Bible did but express with the arguments of an expert biblical scholar the unanimous tradition of the Church. The thesis of Mary as the mother of a large family arose only, as we have recalled, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in circles of liberal Protestantism, affected by the enlightened rationalism of its time.
The faith of the Church in the perpetual virginity of Mary has been confessed many times in Tradition and in the Magisterium. The Catechism of the Church, as I have recalled above, affirms this briefly and clearly (499-501), and refers to numerous documents which I shall here cite in abbreviated form:
“Mary virgin”, “the Virgin Mother”, “the ever-Virgin Mary”, or simply “the Virgin”, are terms used in the traditional formulas that have expressed the faith of the Church: –(215) Traditio apostolica; Dz 10. –(374) Symbol of Epiphanius: “Mary ever virgin” (aeiparthenos); Dz 44, a title that will be repeated in many later documents. –(391) St. Augustine; Dz 14. –(404) Tyrannius Rufinus; Dz 16. –(414) Nicetas; Dz 19. –(449) Letter of St. Leo the Great to Flavian; Dz291. –(553) V Council of Constantinople; Dz 427. –(561) Pelagius I, Letter to King Childebert; Dz442. –(653) Synod of the Lateran; Dz 503. –(693) XVI Synod of Toledo; Dz 573: “the Virgin, just as before the conception she preserved the modesty of virginity, so after the birth she experienced no corruption of her integrity, for a virgin she conceived, a virgin she gave birth and after the birth she preserved ever the modesty of virginity.” –(1274) II Council of Lyon; Dz 852. –(1555) Pius V, Cum quorundam; Dz 1880: “the ever-Virgin Mary… remained ever in the integrity of virginity, before the birth, in the birth and perpetually after the birth”… This is the faith of the Christian people, confirmed and expressed by innumerable Fathers and Doctors of the Church.
The Second Vatican Council also confesses “the glorious ever-Virgin Mary” (LG 52; cf. UR 15). And Paul VI, in the Credo of the People of God (1968), confesses as a dogma of the faith that “Mary remained ever Virgin” (n. 14). In the Dutch Catechism (1968) it was said concerning the perpetual virginity of Mary: “John 19:27 [the words of Jesus on the cross to the Virgin and to St. John] makes it particularly improbable that Mary had other children besides Jesus” (A New Catechism for Adults, Barcelona, Herder 1969, p. 81). But the Cardinalatial Commission formed to correct it required of it a firmer declaration: “The permanent virginity of Mary is affirmed by the tradition of the Church and is taught as a truth of faith by the magisterium.” This is also, of course, the unanimous faith of Orthodoxy.
Every day of the year we Catholics, at the beginning of Mass, confess the perpetual virginity of the Most Holy Virgin Mary: “confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatæ Mariæ semper Virgini“… “Therefore I beseech holy Mary, ever Virgin”… Lex orandi, lex credendi.
Editor’s note: José María Iraburu has been a priest and doctor in theology for more than 30 years.
Post post. –José Antonio Pagola, in the first eight editions of his work Jesús; aproximación histórica, said in a note: “Meier, perhaps the Catholic researcher of greatest prestige at present, after an exhaustive study concludes that ‘the most probable opinion is that the brothers and sisters of Jesus really were so'” (p. 43). According to that, the scientific examination of the question on the historical and exegetical plane leads probably to the conviction that the Virgin was not a virgin... And in the revised edition of his book (9th and 10th) he modifies that note sparingly in the following terms:
“According to Mark 6:3, the inhabitants of Nazareth express themselves thus: ‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, and Joseph, and Jude, and Simon? Are not also his sisters here with us?’. In the ancient Church there were already diverse answers in approaching the interpretation of this text and of others that speak of ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ of Jesus (Mark 3:31-32; 1 Corinthians 9:5; Galatians 1:19). The most widespread interpretation down to our days has been that of Jerome, who considers them ‘cousins or close relatives’. The studies of Meier and other exegetes today discard this interpretation for reasons above all philological, and consider that these texts speak of real ‘brothers’ of Jesus. These conclusions must be situated in the context of a patriarchal culture based on agnatio (descent through males): in this culture, the only thing affirmed when it is said that two persons are ‘brothers’ is that they have the same father. The Catholic Church has always understood that these passages do not refer to other children of the Virgin Mary” (p. 53).
Two options, then, to choose from: what “the studies of Meier and other exegetes” say, or “what the Catholic Church has always taught” with the support of the Catholic exegetes, who give evangelical foundation to the apostolic Magisterium. As you see, the slight modification of the text made by Pagola, after 8 editions, with more than 70,000 copies sold, in which the Virgin is not a virgin, is not as evident as one might desire.
Author: Rev. José María Iraburu
