from the heelers emails

Augustinian mornings.

-

Hey there Marie.

Another all nighter with the computer.

Jess the miracle dog is at my feet. The other one is curled up in a basket. Strangely she's not snoring for once.

Normally Mollie asleep emits a stream of sounds like nothing so much as the tennis player Monica Seles who was famous for grunting her way through games.

So August is dawning around  me. I've been asking the creator for miracles and news came this week that a woman I was praying for has had some relief from cancer. I'm just waiting to see if we get the real whap, bam, thud miracle.

I love those.

On the internet I've been listening to broadcasts by Allie Beth Stukie. at the moment she's talking about Catholic doctrine re the Blessed Mother's perpetual virginity. Allie Beth describes herself as Evangelical but she's certainly not hostile to Catholics or the church.

The question is did Joseph and Mary have sex or not.

A certain rarified delicatesse among some believers may dispose them to the notion that the Blessed Mother remained eternally a virgin.

But the overall tradition of the church has been likewise and this cannot in my view be simply dismissed as delicatesse.

The New Testament says that Joseph and Mary did not have any such intimate contact before the birth of Jesus but does not say anything about afterwards.

The gospel witnesses do mention Jesus having brothers and sisters but the Hebrew word for brothers and sisters is the same word used for cousins and kinsmen so the scriptures don't settle the matter definitively.

I could imagine Mary and Joseph adopting kids. Maybe half the town was living in their kitchen and perhaps those adopted ones were known as Jesus' brothers and sisters.

I knew an Irish woman of the present era who adopted and fostered 17 children and in her family circle they were considered brothers and sisters to the four she gave birth to from her own womb.

The early church held to a tradition that Mary remained a virgin always and this notion is shared by the Eastern Orthodox and also in their formal doctrines by Lutherans and Anglicans. Among the great men of Protestantism, Zwingli, John Wesley and Calvin also held irrevocably to the idea.

It's never been important to me Marie. Although the church has a dogma on the matter, it is not the core of the good news of the Gospel which we have been commissioned to preach until the end of time. I am open to it as true. I would have no problem if at the end of time I was told, no it wasn't true and that those modern Protestants and others who seem to have gotten bored with the idea were actually correct in walking away from it.

Mary is still the highest saint of heaven and has obtained miracles for me from God regardless of whether this dogma is correctly defined or not.

And the heart of Catholic doctrine is still Christ the liberator today, yesterday and forever.

Peace.

Saint James of Kilcullen