As a Protestant there were many parts of the Bible that troubled me. Mostly it was a nagging feeling of unease because it just didn’t make sense. The angelic visitations to Zechariah and Mary was one of those things that troubled me. I didn’t spend a lot of time meditating on it because I figured that if it was a big problem, there would be other people talking about it and nobody in my Protestant world seemed to think it was worth discussing. I thought Zechariah got a raw deal! He has an angel visit him (Luke 1:5-25), tell him that his elderly barren wife was going to have a baby, he says “No way!” and in punishment he gets to be struck speechless until the baby, John the Baptist, is named. Mary has a visit from an angel (Luke 1:26-38), gets told she is going to have a baby and says “No way!” and gets let off without so much as a handslap. What’s the deal? This was just one of the many places in the Bible that I didn’t understand, had no explanation for, and was forced to look away.
As a Catholic, I understand those passages much differently.
Zechariah’s answer to the angelic messenger “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” expressed disbelief for which he was punished.
If Mary’s answer, “How shall this be since I do not know man?” had expressed disbelief, she would have been punished as well. If she had been planning to have sex with Joseph after their marriage, she wouldn’t have had a question. So what’s she asking? Where babies come from? That’s not likely. Catholics believe that Mary’s question to the angel reflects a vow of perpetual virginity taken by Mary. Mary was curious about how conception was to take place given her vow.
An important historical document which supports the teaching of Mary’s perpetual virginity is the Protoevangelium of James, which was written probably less than sixty years after the conclusion of Mary’s earthly life (around A.D. 120), when memories of her life were still vivid in the minds of many.
According to the world-renowned patristics scholar, Johannes Quasten: “The principal aim of the whole writing [Protoevangelium of James] is to prove the perpetual and inviolate virginity of Mary before, in, and after the birth of Christ” (Patrology, 1:120–1).
To begin with, the Protoevangelium records that when Mary’s birth was prophesied, her mother, St. Anne, vowed that she would devote the child to the service of the Lord, as Samuel had been by his mother (1 Sam. 1:11). Mary would thus serve the Lord at the Temple, as women had for centuries (1 Sam. 2:22), and as Anna the prophetess did at the time of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:36–37). A life of continual, devoted service to the Lord at the Temple meant that Mary would not be able to live the ordinary life of a child-rearing mother. Rather, she was vowed to a life of perpetual virginity.
However, due to considerations of ceremonial cleanliness, it was eventually necessary for Mary, a consecrated “virgin of the Lord,” to have a guardian or protector who would respect her vow of virginity. Thus, according to the Protoevangelium, Joseph, an elderly widower who already had children, was chosen to be her spouse. (This would also explain why Joseph was apparently dead by the time of Jesus’ adult ministry, since he does not appear during it in the gospels, and since Mary is entrusted to John, rather than to her husband Joseph, at the crucifixion).
According to the Protoevangelium, Joseph was required to regard Mary’s vow of virginity with the utmost respect. The gravity of his responsibility as the guardian of a virgin was indicated by the fact that, when she was discovered to be with child, he had to answer to the Temple authorities, who thought him guilty of defiling a virgin of the Lord. Mary was also accused of having forsaken the Lord by breaking her vow. Keeping this in mind, it is an incredible insult to the Blessed Virgin to say that she broke her vow by bearing children other than her Lord and God, who was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The perpetual virginity of Mary has always been reconciled with the biblical references to Christ’s brethren through a proper understanding of the meaning of the term “brethren.” The understanding that the brethren of the Lord were Jesus’ stepbrothers (children of Joseph) rather than half-brothers (children of Mary) was the most common one until the time of Jerome (fourth century). It was Jerome who introduced the possibility that Christ’s brethren were actually his cousins, since in Jewish idiom cousins were also referred to as “brethren.” The Catholic Church allows the faithful to hold either view, since both are compatible with the reality of Mary’s perpetual virginity.
Today most Protestants are unaware of these early beliefs regarding Mary’s virginity and the proper interpretation of “the brethren of the Lord.” And yet, the Protestant Reformers themselves—Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli—honored the perpetual virginity of Mary and recognized it as the teaching of the Bible, as have other, more modern Protestants.
When the canon was set by the Catholic Church there was never any idea that it was to be the “sole rule of faith” why would there have been a need to include a document such as the Protoevangelium? The Church was the guardian of the Deposit of Faith, and the canon itself was part of that deposit…why accept that men who were so full of the Holy Spirit they could accurately discern what was and was not Sacred Scripture then reject what they believed was revealed by Sacred Scripture and supported by the earliest commentaries and documents of the Church?
And for the record, the same word used to describe Jesus “brothers” was also used to describe Abraham’s relationship to Lot and there were most decidedly not brothers. There’s more to that explanation for another day.
Catholic Answers: Mary Ever Virgin
Scripture Catholic: Blessed Virgin Mary
