Traditional Catholic Teaching

Appendix to Supplement A: Lesson 18

Appendix Four: The Perpetual Virginity of Mary

An excerpt from "Everymans Theology by Leo Von Rudolf, O.S.B. Bruce Publishing 1942

It is significant, that the Catholic people rose in protest against the heresy of Nestorius ( * see note at end) from the very moment that he began to assail Mary's divine maternity. Indeed Christianity has most intimately identified itself with this mystery. The mystery of the union of the divine nature with the human nature in one divine Person is most strikingly revealed in the formula: "Mary is the Mother of God; Mary has given birth to God". The divine maternity of Mary was solemnly proclaimed at the General Council of Ephesus (431), from which time also the building of churches under her patronage received a new impetus, e g, the Church of St Mary Major in Rome. Her divine maternity is the source of all the prerogatives that Catholics recognise in her.

The first of her prerogatives is perpetual virginity. That she was a virgin before and after the birth of Christ and that she purposed to remain ever after a virgin is evident beyond all doubt from her reply to the Angel Gabriel: "How shall this happen, since I do not know man?" (Luke 1: 34) That she persevered spotless in her virginity is plain from these same words for it is inconceivable that after giving birth to the Son of God she should have abandoned her purpose. The same is evident from the fact that shortly before His death on the cross Christ gave the Apostle St John to her as a son and committed him to her care. He said to Mary: "Woman behold thy son!" (John 19: 26), and to John: "Behold thy mother!"
(John 19: 27.)

Therefore the Church has from earliest times kept inviolate her faith in the perpetual virginity of Mary. Only Tertullian the eminent ecclesiastical writer who lapsed into heresy, and Helvidius and Jovinian, other heretics, dared to question the doctrine. The "brethren" of Jesus, whom Scripture mentions, were merely cousins. Abraham called his nephew Lot his "brother" (Gen. 14: 14), because it was formerly the custom to speak of relatives as brethren or sisters and the Hebrew language had no word for "nephew". The apostle St. James the Less and his brother Joseph, spoken of as brethren of Jesus, were the sons of a certain Mary. Of her we read in John (19: 25), that she was with the women who stood at the foot of the cross, and is there called "sister" of the Mother of God and wife of Cleophas or

Alphaeus. According to a tradition, of which Hegesippus (d. 180), and St. Jerome (d. 419 or 420) are witnesses, Alphaeus was a brother of St. Joseph. Hence this Mary was a sister-in-law of the Mother of God and her sons the cousins of Jesus.

* NESTORIANISM. The heresy of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople (d. c. 451), who received it from Diodoros of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia. It consists in the doctrine that in Jesus Christ were two persons joined together, namely, God the Son (the Word) and the man Jesus; Jesus was the dwelling-place or vesture of the Word, he alone was born of our Lady, he only, not the Word, died on the cross: whereas the Catholic teaching was and is that from its first moment Christ's human nature existed as the human nature of the Word and never as a single, independently existing nature; God and man is one Christ. one person in two natures. The controversy raged round the representative word theotokos, Mother of God, a title which the Nestorians, of course, refused to our Lady. Nestorius was condemned by Pope St. Celestine I, but he continued to argue. The third ecumenical council therefore met at Ephesus in 431 and repeated the condemnation which was confirmed at the Council of Chalcedon. The errors of Nestorius were adopted by the Christians of Persia who, once mighty, still exist as the tiny Nestorian Church.

Entry from "A Catholic Dictionary, edited by Donald Attwater" (Macmillan, 1958)

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