As a non-Catholic, anyone want to explain:
(1) any biblical support for Mary being a virgin forever and/or being immaculately conceived herself; or
(2) why this has any relevance or bearing for us being saved through faith in Jesus Christ?
Just curious.
NO!!!!!!!
There are, currently, at least two threads active on the Religion forum in which this matter is being discussed.
Why don't you go read them, first?
The following is from "The Question Box" by Rev. Bertrand L. Conway written in 1903.
How can you claim that Mary was always a virgin, when the Scriptures often speak of the brethren of Jesus (Matt. xii. 46-50; Mark iii. 31-35; Luke viii. 19-21; John vii. 3-10; Acts i. 14)?
The dogma of the Virgin Birth was denned as an article of faith by the Fifth General Council held at Constantinople under Pope Vigilius in 553, and again by the Lateran Council held by Pope Martin I at Rome in 640. It is a dogma held unanimously by the Fathers of the Church from the very beginning, and taught explicitly in both the Old Testament and the New.
The prophet Isaias foretold the birth of Jesus Christ from a Virgin Mother. He says: "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and His name shall be called Emmanuel" (Isa. vii. 14). The word he uses for virgin, almah, is always equivalent to virgin in the Old Testament (Gen. xxiv. 43; Exod. ii. 4; Canticles i. 2; vi. 7; Ps. lxvii. 26; Prov. xxx. 19). The Jews in their Septuagint version of the Old Testament (286-246 B. C.) translated almah by parthenos, the Greek equivalent for an inviolate virgin.
The New Testament teaches the Virgin Birth in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke. "Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. i. 20). "The angel was sent from God to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph" (Luke i. 26, 27).
The Fathers of the first four centuries all teach the Virgin Birth: St. Justin Martyr (Apol., xxxi., 46; Dial, cum Tryp., 85); Aristides {Apol.) ; St. Irenaeus (Adv. Hcer., v., 19); Origen (Horn., vii., In Lucam) ; St. Hilary (In Matt., i., 3), St. Epiphanius (Adv. Har., lxxviii., 1-7; St. Jerome (Adv. Helv.).
Although a few of the Fathers, like St. Epiphanius (Adv. Hcer., lxxxviii., 7), St. Gregory of Nyssa (in Christi Ress., ii.) and St. Cyril of Alexandria (In Joan., vii., 5) held that "the brethren of the Lord" were children of St. Joseph by a former marriage, the vast majority held with St. Jerome that they were cousins of Jesus. The Fathers give four reasons why they were not Mary's children. 1. They argue that her virginity was implied by her answer to the angel: "How shall this be done, because I know not man" (Luke i. 34); 2. If Mary had other children, why is Jesus so emphatically called "the Son of Mary?" (Mark vi. 3), and why is Mary never called the Mother of the brethren of the Lord?; 3. The Gospel texts all imply that the brethren were older than Jesus. They were jealous of His popularity; they criticized Him and gave Him advice; they endeavored to lay hold on Him on the supposition that He was mad (Mark vi. 4; John vii. 1; Mark iii. 31); 4. If Mary had other children, why should Jesus, dying on the Cross, have intrusted His Mother to the care of St. John? (John xix. 26, 27.)
We will never know to a certainty the exact relationship of the four brothers, James, Joseph, Simon and Jude. It will always remain doubtful whether "Mary of Clopas (Cleophas) was the wife of Clopas or his sister. In either case her children, James and Joseph, were cousins of Jesus, either on the mother's or the father's side. It will always remain doubtful whether James, the brother of the Lord, is James the Apostle, the son of Alphaeus; and again, whether his father Alphaeus is the same as Clopas (Alphaeus-Clopas), the brother of St. Joseph. If both hypotheses are true, and we think they are, then Jude was a cousin of Jesus on both his mother's and his father's side.
The word "brother" in itself proves nothing, for it had a very wide meaning among the Jews. It is used in the Old Testament for relatives in general (Job xlii. 2; xix. 13, 14), nephews (Gen. xiii. 18; xxiv. 14; xxix. 15), distant cousins (Lev. x. 4), and first cousins (1 Par. xxiii. 21, 22). Besides there was no word in Hebrew or Aramaic for cousin, so that the Old Testament writers were forced to use the word AH, brother, to describe different degrees of kindred. For example, Jacob, speaking of his cousin Rachel, calls himself her father's brother, rather than style himself the son of her father's sister, the only way he could in Hebrew describe his real relationship (Gen. xxix. 12). It is certain, therefore, that if Jesus had cousins, especially if they were born of the same mother, they must needs be called in the Aramaic tongue, His brethren.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Conway, The Virgin Birth; Corluy, Les Freres de Jesus Christ; Durand, The Childhood of Jesus Christ; Lagrange, Evangile selon Saint Matthieu, S. Marc et S. Luc. C. G. Jan., 1924.— D. B. i. 418; ii. 807, 1084, 1673, 1806.—D. T. ix. 2369-2385.—E. T. 1878, 15, 145.—R. B. 1908, 8.—I. T. April Oct., 1913.
Can you prove from the Scriptures that the Virgin Mary was miraculously conceived? Does not your doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin contradict the Scriptures, which teach that all men died in Adam (1 Cor. xv. 22; Cf. Rom. v. 12) ? Is this not a new teaching of your Church, first proclaimed in 1854?
We do not believe that the Virgin Mary was miraculously conceived. Her Son was born miraculously of a virgin Mother, but she herself had a real father and a real mother, St. Joachim and St. Anne. The doctrine means that at the very first instant when her soul was infused into her body, the Virgin Mary was sanctified by God's grace, so that her soul was never deprived of the sanctification, which all other creatures had forfeited by the sin of Adam. Her soul was never displeasing to God, because it had never been stained with original sin. On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX defined that "the doctrine which declares that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God, and therefore must be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful" (Ineffabilis Deus).
Rationalists and Broadchurchmen deny this dogma because they deny the existence of Original Sin, while orthodox Protestants deny it, because of their erroneous notion of Original Sin. Cardinal Newman writes: "Our doctrine of Original Sin is not the same as the Protestant doctrine. Original Sin with us cannot be called sin, in the mere ordinary sense of the word; it is a term denoting Adam's sin as transferred to us, or the state to which Adam's sin reduces his children; but by Protestants it seems to be understood as sin, in much the same sense as actual sin.',
We, with the Fathers, think of it as something negative, Protestants as something positive. Protestants hold that it is a disease, a radical change of nature, an active poison actively corrupting the soul, infecting its primary elements, and disorganizing it; and they fancy we ascribe a different nature from ours to the Blessed Virgin, different from that of her parents, and from that of fallen Adam.
We hold nothing of the kind; we consider that in Adam she died as others; that she was included, together with the whole race, in Adam's sentence; that she incurred the debt as we do; but that for the sake of Him who was to redeem her and us upon the Cross, to her the debt was remitted by anticipation; on her the sentence was not carried out, except indeed as regards her natural death, for she died when her time came, as others.
All this we teach, but we deny that she had Original Sin; for by Original Sin we mean, as I have already said, something negative, namely, this only, the deprivation of that supernatural, unmerited grace which Adam and Eve had on their first formation—deprivation and the consequences of deprivation.
Mary could not merit, any more than they, the restoration of that grace; but it was restored to her by God's free bounty from and at the very first moment of her existence, and thereby, in fact, she never came under the original curse, which consisted in the loss of it" {Difficulties of Anglicans, ii., 48, 49).
The Scriptures nowhere expressly teach this doctrine, but Pius IX cites two passages, from which it may be inferred, if they are considered in the light of Catholic tradition. They are: "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel" (Gen. iii. 15). "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women" (Luke i. 28). Christ and His Mother are both spoken of as enemies of Satan and of sin; He, absolutely sinless as the Son of God, and she sinless, or full of grace, by God's special prerogative and gift.
The Blessed Virgin holds a unique position of dignity and preeminence in the writings of the early Fathers, many of whose statements would be exaggerated or untrue, had she been conceived in Original Sin. They imply her freedom from all sin by their insistence upon her perfect purity, and her position as the second Eve.
St. Irenaeus (140-205) writes: "As Eve, becoming disobedient, became the cause of death both to herself and the whole human race, so also Mary, bearing the predestined Man, and being yet a virgin, being obedient, became both to herself and to the whole human race the cause of salvation" (Adv. Ear., hi., 22). The same idea is set forth by St. Justin Martyr, Tertul-lian, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Ephrem of Syria, St. Epiphanius. St. Jerome and others, cited by Cardinal Newman in his letter to Dr. Pusey (C/. Harper, The Immaculate Conception, 43-59). Of all the testimonies that might be given, St. Ephrem's (306-373) words of praise can only mean that Mary was immaculately conceived. He says that "she was as innocent as Eve before her fall, a Virgin most estranged from every stain of sin, more holy than the Seraphim, the sealed fountain of the Holy Ghost, the pure seed of God, ever in body and in mind intact and immaculate" (Carmina Nisibena, first discovered and published in 1866).
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Harper, The Immaculate Conception; Kellner, The Christian Festivals; Livius, The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers; Newman, Letter to Dr. Pusey; Pohle, Mariology; Rickaby, The Lord My Light, 223-231; Storf, The Immaculate Conception; Ullathorne, The Immaculate Conception; Vacandard, Etudes de Critique, hi., 215. C. E. vii. 674-681.—D. Oct., 1893.—D. T. vi. 846-1218.—I. T. Oct., 1918.—R. A. vi. 766-844.—R. C. i. 173; viii. 276.
Why do Catholics pay so much honor to Mary, when she was only an ordinary woman? Does not Catholic devotion to her detract from the worship due to Christ?
The Catholic Church has always paid special honor to the Blessed Virgin, because God honored her above all creatures by bestowing upon her the highest dignity He could confer the divine maternity. The Scriptures tell us that Jesus honored her by dwelling with her under the same roof at Nazareth for thirty years until He began His public ministry, and that He showed His love to her on the Cross, when He left her to the kindly care of His beloved disciple, St. John (John xix. 26). I could never understand how intelligent men hoped to extol the Son of God by making little of the Mother of God. We do not win the affections of our fellowmen by despising or making little of their mothers.
How can you call Mary an ordinary woman, and at the same time pretend that you have studied the Scriptures? Would God choose an ordinary woman to be the Mother of His only Son, when He had countless millions of women to choose from? The prophet Isaias spoke of her coming centuries before (vii. 14), and God sent from heaven a special ambassador to announce her supereminent dignity (Luke i. 26), and another to comfort St. Joseph in his doubting (Matt. i. 20). Both the angel and St. Elizabeth called her "blessed among women" (Luke i. 2&, 43), and her own prophecy that "henceforth all generations shall call me blessed" (Luke i. 48) is fulfilled to the letter every day by Catholics the world over.
Instead of detracting from the love of Christ, devotion to Mary increases our love for Him. The devout client of Mary is ever the strong defender of the divinity of Jesus Christ, her Son. The divine maternity, as the Council of Ephesus clearly recognized in 431, has ever been the standard of orthodox belief in the true doctrine of the Incarnation.
Love for Mary, the masterpiece of God's creation, by its very nature leads us to the love of Christ her Son. He cannot be jealous of the praise we give her, for every one of her privileges and prerogatives are His own free gift. Is the artist jealous of the praise you give his masterpiece? Is the author jealous of the praise you give his book?
in addition
Many Protestants do not know that both Luther and Calvin admitted the dogma of the divine maternity. Luther writes: There is no honor, no beatitude, capable of approaching an elevation which consists in being, of the whole human race, the sole person, superior to all others, unequaled in the prerogative of having one Son in common with the Heavenly Father" (Deutsche Schriften, xiv., 250). Calvin writes: "We cannot acknowledge the blessings brought us by Jesus without acknowledging at the same time how highly God honored and enriched Mary in choosing her for the Mother of God" (Comm. sur VHarm., Evang., 20). (emphasis added)
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Barrett, Our Lady in the Liturgy; Friedel, The Mariology of Cardinal Newman; Ganss, Mariolatry; Garriguet, La Vierge Marie; Gerrard, The Cult of Mary; Hogan, The Mother of Divine Grace; Lattey (ed.), The Incarnation, ix.; Livius, The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers; Nesbitt, Our Lady in the Church; Neubert, Marie dans VEglise Anteniceenne; Newman, Mary, the Mother of Jesus; Northcote, Mary in the Gospels; Petitalot, The Virgin Mother; Pohle, Mariology; Schaefer, The Mother of Jesus; Stewart, The Greater Eve; Shahan, The Blessed Virgin in the Catacombs; Vassall-Phillips, The Mother of God; The Mother of Christ; Vonier, The Divine Motherhood. A. Q. 1878, 594.—C. E. xv. 459-472.—C. W. i. 129.—D. T. ix. 2339-2474.—Kirchenlexicon, viii., 711.
nihil sub sole novum nec valet quisquam dicere ecce hoc recens est iam enim praecessit in saeculis quae fuerunt ante nos
Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it hath already gone before in the ages that were before us.
ECCLESIASTES: Chapter 1:10
You may not know it but Catholics don't fear the Bible. The Bible and the Church are in full accord.
Why, because the Church made the Bible. This she did by collecting the Jewish and Christian writings extant, and selecting from them the books and letters that form the canon of Scripture, declaring them to be writings that were inspired by God.