[Alex Murphy]

The Early Church Fathers are almost unanimous in the assertion that the birth was painless and had no loss of Mary's virginal integrity during the birth. In other words, her Hymen didn't break. St. Augustine said "Jesus passed through the womb of Mary as a ray of sun passes through glass"....This was confirmed by Pope Paul IV and many others before and after. If Jesus emerged from a sealed tomb, and passed through closed doors, surely he could pass through Mary's womb without breaking her hymen and causing her pain.

Excerpted from the article:
Did Mary Have a Bunch of Kids? Mary's perpetual virginity before, during and after Jesus' birth

See also the much longer and heavily footnoted study:
THE VIRGINITY OF OUR LADY IN PARTU: The Painless, Miraculous Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ

[MHGinTN]

I'm purposely not going to read the article or the rest of the thread, 'cause I want to give the following fresh, without taint.

I'm not a Catholic, but I believe Jesus was born by the same method God used to leave the burial clothes and the solid rock tomb without rolling away the stone, the same technique of moving from where/when to where/when and back again that he used to appear in the locked and shuttered upper room, and the same method He used to write on Belshazzar's palace party central wall while standing in a different where/when than Belshazzar's realm.

Call it what you will, but there are clues all over the Bible pointing to the ability to move between where/whens which God created and His Holy Spirit maintains.

What is more incredible than that feat is that Mary agreed to be the Mother of Jesus without knowing she would not go through the pains of childbirth at the time she agreed! Truly, The Blessed Virgin was the handmaiden of the Lord. She did the greatest job of baby sitting ever in the History of the world! And we are the more blessed for it.

[MHGinTN]

Okay, now I read it. It’s comforting to know I agree with the Church fathers. Of course, we used the same source materials so ... it’s all good. Yeah!

[M Kehoe]

Good evening.

You posted this article but haven't addressed any of the other posts? Just curious, why not?

5.56mm

[Quix]

Thanks for the great links.

Got em saved in my

“RC DOCUMENTED NONSENSE” file.

[Iscool]

I'm just starting out on this thread so I will cover some ground that no doubt has been cleared up by other Christians already...

That the Catholic religion is based upon untruths and outright deception when dealing with scripture is again evident in this sentence...

But they left out the words "for me" from middle of the sentence "The Lord has done great things for me, and Holy is his name.

Luk 1:49 For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.

As can be seen, God did not do great things for Mary...She knows that...We know that...God did great things TO Mary...

And they claim it's all because we interpret the scriptures wrong...We don't know the difference between TO and FOR...

"The Early Church Fathers are almost unanimous in the assertion that the birth was painless and had no loss of Mary's virginal integrity during the birth. In other words, her Hymen didn't break.

Almost??? You guys should have stuck with the guys who rejected the idea...

This was confirmed by Pope Paul IV and many others before and after.

Your pope and a couple of old commentators claim it's true so you believe it??? What does God HImself say about it in the scriptures??? We already know, don't we...

[Uri’el-2012]

I have always wondered why all the super-human
attributes assigned to a created human being ?

Miriam states that she is a sinner requiring a savior. (Luke 1:47)

Why magical titles like "mother of god" ?

There do not seem to be any reason for these.

Their absence do not detract nor diminish our relationship with YHvH.

shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach

[aruanan]

This was confirmed [reasserted] by Pope Paul IV and many others before and after. If Jesus emerged from a sealed tomb, and passed through closed doors, surely he could pass through Mary's womb without breaking her hymen and causing her pain. If pain is the punishment of original sin and birth pangs the first punishment at the fall (Gen 3) for Eve's disobedience. It follows that Mary as the new Eve, who was obedient to God (Lk 1:38), would not have suffered giving birth to the "new Adam". If Eve came out of Adam's rib with no pain while he slept, it follows that Jesus (the new Adam) came out of Mary (the new Eve) without pain.*

It follows, it follows, it follows...

Positing a result I like doesn't make the premise sound; neither does arguing by analogy; besides, it's what goes in, not what comes out, that changes the virginal state.

Besides, the more interesting question is what is the origin of the desperation to keep Mary, who was, indeed, a virgin when she conceived and gave birth to Jesus, a lifelong virgin and why, in the principal NT documents, there is no hint of a virginal cult (and many relationships and language that have to be explained away), especially in Pauline letters regarding the status of virgins and marriage. Although Paul said that he thought it would be better for folks to remain unmarried as he was (presumably virginal, but at least chaste), his argument was that it would leave one free to concentrate on the work for the Lord not, "If remaining a life-long virgin was good enough for the mother of Jesus, it should be good enough for the rest of us," much less any allusion to the BVM, Queen of Heaven.

Over the almost two millennia since Jesus departed to prepare a place for his followers, there have been different traditions springing up and propagating themselves, some more successfully than others, because of a few unwarranted assumptions:

1. Mary had to be born without sin so Jesus would be born without the taint of original sin.

2. God didn't have Jesus conceived immaculately like he had Mary conceived immaculately so she could conceive Jesus immaculately because, well, because he just didn't!

3. Original sin was something that was passed along genetically through the body.

4. (I've actually heard this one taught in a college Biblical literature class) Sin is passed along through the father so that's why Jesus couldn't have had an earthly father or he would have had a sin nature.

5. Jesus only appeared to be born in a human body.

6. Jesus was the human body, subject to all the frailties and degradation of material existence; the Christ was the son of God who filled that earthly vessel but without partaking of its corrupt nature.

7. God couldn't have had Jesus born as the perfect lamb of God without blemish from Mary because she was of the fallen human race so he created, ex nihilo, within her womb, the perfect embryo of Jesus.

Most of these probably originated through Gnostic teachings (even millennia later, such as #7) that held matter to be evil and corrupt and spirit to be pure and good. Pretty much all of the answers to anyone questioning them fall into a few categories:

1. Well, that's how God chose to do it and who are you to question him?

2. With God and faith all things are possible, even squaring the circle, finding 2+2=5, and making God the origin and cause of all sin and suffering in the world for his greater glory as a holy and just God.

3. God revealed this to the church hierarchy, of which you are not a member and so cannot possibly understand, much less question, the veracity of their pronouncements and, if you were, would, by that very act of questioning, be demonstrating your lack of faith and antagonism to all things righteous and pure and, thus, confirm that you are wrong and they are right.

* It follows that Mary as the new Eve, who was obedient to God (Lk 1:38), would not have suffered giving birth to the "new Adam". If Eve came out of Adam's rib with no pain while he slept, it follows that Jesus (the new Adam) came out of Mary (the new Eve) without pain.

Both your allusions as well as the direction of proposed cause and effect are a bit screwy. The old Adam didn't come from the old Eve. And if Eve came out of Adam without pain, it doesn't follow that the new Adam came out of the new Eve (not even a scriptural concept) without pain. The most you could claim with such an analogy is that as Eve came from the originating body of Adam while he slept so he would feel no pain, so the new Eve came from the originating body of her mother while her mother slept so she would feel no pain. The reply to such a statement would be, "Why are you going on like this about something like that? What relevance does that have to anything?" Answer: none. But it would demonstrate that the multiple chiasms of Eve from Adam, new Adam from new Eve, Adam suffered no pain from Eve, the new Eve suffered no pain from the new Adam are constructed for the purpose of lending imaginative--rather than exegetical or rational--support to a doctrine the question of whose accuracy, or even necessity, has been thoroughly begged.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Thanks for this thread, Alex.

They who bow down to idols become like them.

[MortMan]

I pray we all have the chance to find out when we meet in heaven.