Commenting on Gal 1:19 and James being called the “brother of the Lord,” Aquinas wrote concerning the “Epiphanian” view of the brothers/sisters of Jesus:
Others say that before the
Blessed Virgin, Joseph had another wife of whom he had James and other
children, and that after she died, he took as a wife the Blessed Virgin, from
whom Christ was born, although she was not known by Joseph, but, as it is said
in the Gospel, he was conceived by the Holy Spirit. But because progeny are
named after their father, and Joseph was considered the father of Christ, for
that reason, James, too, although he was not the son of the Virgin, was
nevertheless called the brother of the Lord. But this is false, because if
the Lord did not want as mother anyone but a virgin entrusted to the care of a
virgin, how would he have allowed her husband not to be a virgin and still
endure it? (source)
The belief informing this (i.e., Joseph was a perpetual
virgin, not just Mary) is found in other Catholic sources. For example, quoting
from Paul VI’s “Discourse to the “Equipes Notre-Dame” Movement (May 4, 1970),”
John Paul II in Redemptoris Custos 7 wrote:
The Savior began the work of
salvation by this virginal and holy union, wherein is manifested his
all-powerful will to purify and sanctify the family—that sanctuary of love and
cradle of life.
The Latin reads:
Opus namque salutis Servator
ex virginali hac et sacra coniunctione incohavit, ubi omnipotens ipsius
ostenditur voluntas purificandae ac sanctifcandae familiae, quae et amoris
sacrarium est et vitae ipsius seminarium”
Previously, Leo XII in Quamquam pluries (August
15, 1889) wrote:
In truth, the dignity of the
Mother of God is so lofty that naught created can rank above it. But as Joseph
has been united to the Blessed Virgin by the ties of marriage, it may not be
doubted that he approached nearer than any to the eminent dignity by which the
Mother of God surpasses so nobly all created natures. For marriage is the most
intimate of all unions which from its essence imparts a community of gifts
between those that by it are joined together. Thus in giving Joseph the Blessed
Virgin as spouse, God appointed him to be not only her life’s companion, the
witness of her maidenhood, the protector of her honour, but also, by virtue of
the conjugal tie, a participator in her sublime dignity. . . . Fathers of
families find in Joseph the best personification of paternal solicitude and
vigilance; spouses a perfect example of love, of peace, and of conjugal
fidelity; virgins at the same time find in him the model and protector of
virginal integrity. The noble of birth will earn of Joseph how to guard their
dignity even in misfortune; the rich will understand, by his lessons, what are
the goods most to be desired and won at the price of their labour. As to
workmen, artisans, and persons of lesser degree, their recourse to Joseph is a
special right, and his example is for their particular imitation. (The Papal
Encyclicals, ed. Claudia Carlen, 5 vols. [Ypsilanti, Mich.: Pierian Press,
1990], 2:208, 209)
As Paul K. Raftery, a Catholic priest, wrote:
THE VIRGINITY OF ST. JOSEPH
St. Jerome was the first to
propose that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph compose a family distinctly marked by
virginity. Addressing the heretic Helvidius, who denied the perpetual virginity
of Our Lady, Jerome writes:
You say that Mary did not
continue a virgin: I claim still more, that Joseph himself on account of Mary
was a virgin, so that from a virgin wedlock a virgin son was born (The
Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin, 21).
What he, in effect, is
suggesting is a method of interpreting the scriptural data about St. Joseph in
a way that harmonizes with the virginal calling of Our Blessed Lord and His
mother. The gospels are silent on a previous marriage of St. Joseph. So does
this mean we turn to the imaginary accounts of the apocrypha? Not at all. We
must not be led by the "ravings of the apocryphal accounts." Rather
he directs our attention to the life of perfect chastity lived by Jesus and
Mary, which speaks so loudly and eloquently of their relationship with God. In
the life of Jesus, we can see how this chastity proclaims that whole purpose of
His entering the world was to fulfil the will of His heavenly Father. In the
life of Mary it proclaims that she who conceived the Son of God by the power of
the Holy Spirit now has been sanctified, and whose body is entirely consecrated
to God. So this virginal vocation of both Jesus and Mary, Jerome implies, is
what needs to guide our interpretation of Joseph. In this context, it would be
surprising for Joseph not to be a virgin. It would be surprising that the
virgin mother who begets the virgin child, was not protected and sustained by a
husband who was virgin as well; that the divine calling of virginity was not
present throughout the family. Thus we discern who St. Joseph is through the
one for whom he is husband, and the One for Whom he is foster father. The sacred
virginity of their lives tells us of the sacred virginity that God must have
wanted to characterize Joseph's life as well.
St. Jerome’s interpretation
begins a trend that becomes dominant in Western authors. Scriptural
commentators from Bede in the seventh century to Rabanus Maurus in the ninth,
basing themselves on St. Jerome, spoke of the life-long virginity of St.
Joseph. By the middle of the eleventh century, there was such a common
conviction about it that St. Peter Damian could say: "If it does
not suffice for you that not only the mother is a virgin, there remains the
belief of the Church that he who served as the father is also a virgin" (Filas,
99).
St. Thomas, about two
hundred years later, adds that further confirmation of St. Joseph's virginity
is to be found in Christ's words to his mother standing beneath the cross.
There, St. Thomas implies, God reveals the kind of person he wishes to care for
Blessed Mary. Whom does he choose? A virgin, John the apostle. In his
commentary on Galatians, St. Thomas tackles the issue of children of Joseph by
a deceased wife. He pointedly states: "But this is false, for if
the Lord did not wish his virgin mother to be entrusted to the care of anyone
but a virgin [i.e., the apostle John], how could he have suffered that her
spouse was not a virgin, and as such would have persisted?" (Ad
Galatas, I:19). And this, St. Thomas lead us to realize, should be persuasive.
Such an act of Christ on the cross is just as much a work of Divine Providence
caring for the Blessed Virgin as the Providence He was exercising when
providing her with a husband. The Providence of God on the cross entrusting His
mother to a virgin reveals the Providence of God in preparation for His
incarnation.
Both St. Peter Damian’s
statement and St. Thomas’ insistence on the falsehood of the apocryphal legend
show how fully St. Joseph’s virginity has been accepted into Church teaching.
From their time to our own this belief has prevailed in the West, and for the
past one thousand years it has never been seriously challenged. This thousand
year period of acceptance is itself a profound confirmation of the truth of
Joseph’s virginity. Having said this, however, it should be clarified that our
belief in St. Joseph’s virginity has never been considered part of the deposit
of the faith, and therefore obligatory for us to accept. Room continues to be
made for viewing St. Joseph as an aged widower, as many of the Greek fathers
taught, a tradition maintained in the Eastern Orthodox Church. (Paul K.
Raftery, “Theology for the
Laity: Discovering the Greatness of St. Joseph Part I: The Growth of His
Devotion,” The Rosary Light & Life 54, no. 4 [July-August 2001])
As Eric D. Svendsen once wrote concerning the Roman
Catholic appeal to the “Epiphanian” view of the brothers/sisters of Jesus:
it is debatable
whether Roman Catholics are at liberty to adopt the Epiphanian view, since that
view affirms that Joseph had other children and denies the explicit and dominant Roman
Catholic teachings and beliefs regarding the lifelong virginity of Joseph. It
appears, then, that Roman Catholics may be in more of a dilemma than Akin has
allowed. On the one hand, if the Roman Catholic is honest and allows himself to
be convinced by the archaeological evidence--and by the weight of the scholarly
opinion behind that evidence--then he must abandon the Hieronymian view of
Mary's perpetual virginity and adopt its only alternative; the Epiphanian view.
On the other hand, to adopt the Epiphanian view is to disregard a
centuries-old dominant doctrinal position that is sure to call
into question the legitimacy of the "ordinary universal magisterium"
(i.e., the common and consistent, long-held teachings and beliefs of the
bishops and popes), a principle that is used at times to establish infallible
teachings in Roman Catholicism. Vatican I states it this way in its
"Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith": "All those things
are to be believed with Catholic and divine faith which are contained in the
Word of God, written or handed on, and are proposed by the
Church either by a solemn judgment or by its ordinary
and universal magisterium as divinely revealed and to be believed as
such." Does the lifelong virginity of Joseph qualify for this? It
certainly seems to be a teaching that was "handed on" by the
"ordinary and universal magisterium," and it is clear that all the
Roman Catholic writers cited above share that belief. It remains to be seen how
Akin--and other Roman Catholics who have now admitted the weakness of the
Hieronymian view--will deal with this issue. Again, time will tell. (source)
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