And on the subject of Mary, there are a few questions or issues regarding the Catholic beliefs on her that have come up for me lately. They both involve the relationship between Joseph and Mary.
The first two have to do with their relationship. As Mary is above the Catholic saints (those Christians whom the Catholic Church recognizes as such), and Joseph is one of them, and Mary is also said to be the mother of all in the Catholic Church, then that would appear to place Mary, the wife, above Joseph, the husband, and begs the question if Joseph would also regard his wife as his mother. I have done a limited amount of looking into these questions, but so far haven’t turned up anything addressing them.
Then, second, in the course of searching on the first questions, I turned up a Catholic web page that states that Jesus got His whole human nature, genetically, from Mary.
http://www.catholic.com/tracts/mary-mother-of-god
It sounds so authoritative and definite, and I’ve heard that elsewhere from another Catholic source, but I’ve also heard from still another Catholic source, stated just as authoritatively and definitively, that Jesus miraculously received the genes of both Joseph and Mary (a possibility I was already aware of and has seemed very likely).
Since, according to the flesh, Jesus was and is male and Mary was female, then by genetics Jesus would have X and Y chromosomes, while Mary would have only X, so that eliminates Him getting His whole human nature from her.
The possibility that Jesus was given the genes of both Joseph and Mary, as I said, seems possible as well as quite likely, but the thing about it is, we just don’t know for sure because God hasn’t definitely revealed that to us. There are too many unanswered questions. As God in human form, Jesus might not have had exactly the same genes and been subject to genetic mutations and disease, for one thing. But while there is no basis for definite conclusions, Roman Catholicism seems to jump to making them anyway.
In the same way, I heard a Catholic radio host (I believe a priest) tell a caller that pets and all animals for that matter don’t go to Heaven as they don’t have souls. Again, this seems to be an area where we don’t know enough to say either way, and a Protestant radio host I heard replying to the question too on a evangelical station seemed to have a better answer - that he didn’t know, but that there seemed to be animals of a sort in Heaven, and whether or not there were, including our pets, we would not feel the loss of anything or feel we’re missing out on anything there.
According to Rome; there WAS none!
Joseph of the Splintery Hands was continually rejected by his 'wife'; Our Lady of the Perpetual Headache.
Their 'marriage' was NEVER consummated - so says ROME!