Eric Lafferty and Paul Haffner (RC): The Perpetual Virginity of Mary is an Infallible Teaching of the Ordinary, not Extraordinary, Univeral Magisterium

 

. . . Mary’s perpetual virginity is best understood as a dogma set forth by the ordinary and universal magisterium. No ecumenical council or pope has presented a solemn definition that contains all three aspects of Mary’s virginity. In this manner, it is unique among the four Marian dogmas. Nevertheless, the church has consistently taught that Mary maintained her virginity before, during, and after the birth of Christ. (Eric Lafferty, Approaching the Assumption, 1863-1950: Revelation, Scripture, and the Laity in the Development of a Marian Dogma [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2025], 21)

 

As a dogma set forth by the ordinary and universal magisterium, it is difficult to assign an exact date for its definition. No ecumenical council or pope ever promulgated a solemn definition that contains the full tripartite definition. Both the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 and the Lateran Synod in 649 are sometimes suggested as possible dates, however, both fall short of a solemn definition. The Second Council of Constantinople used the title aeiparthenos but did not issue a definition. The Lateran Synod issued a definition but is not regarded as an ecumenical council. Regardless, the accumulation of pronouncements by popes, ecumenical councils, church fathers, and synods suffice to demonstrate the church’s consistent doctrinal tradition of affirming Mary’s virginity ante partum, in partu, and post partum. (Eric Lafferty, Approaching the Assumption, 1863-1950: Revelation, Scripture, and the Laity in the Development of a Marian Dogma [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2025], 28)

 

As Lafferty elsewhere notes, “it would be misguided to downplay the synod’s authority” (Ibid., 28 n. 92). He then quotes Haffner. Here is a fuller quotation from that work:

 

 

The solemn definitions of faith by the Ecumenical Councils and the papal Magisterium followed the first brief formulae of faith and the teaching of the Fathers on the virginal conception. The Council of Chalcedon in the year 451, in its carefully formulated profession of faith and with its infallibly defined content, affirms that Christ was ‘begotten . . .as to his humanity in the latter days, for us and for our salvation from Mary the Virgin Mother of God.’ In the year 649, the Lateran Council made a clear declaration concerning the virginal conception: ‘If anyone does not, according to the Holy Fathers, confess truly and properly that the holy and ever virgin and immaculate Mary . . . without human seed, conceived by the Holy Spirit, God the Word Himself, who before all time was born of God the Father . . . let him be condemned.’ The council was not ecumenical, but since it was conducted under the authority of Pope Martin I, and the teaching was given under pain of anathema, so its authority came to be regarded as very weighty. Pope Martin’s successor Agatho conveyed the impression that the decisions of the Lateran Council were definitive, infallible and binding the faith.

 

In the same way, in the year 681, the third Council of Constantinople proclaimed that Jesus Christ was ‘begotten . . . as to his humanity, by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, she who is properly and in all truth the Mother of God.’ Other Ecumenical Councils (Constantinople II, Lateran IV and Lyons II) declared Mary ‘ever-virgin’, stressing her perpetual virginity. These affirmations were taken up by the Second Vatican Council, which highlighted the fact that Mary ‘through her faith and obedience . . . gave birth on earth to the very Son of the Father, not through the knowledge of man but by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.’ (Paul Haffner, The Mystery of Mary [Herefordshire, U.K.: Gracewing, 2024], 145-46, emphasis in bold added)

 

The following is the text of Paul IV’s 1555 affirmation of virginity in partum that is referenced elsewhere by both Lafferty and Haffner:

 

 

The Trinity and the Incarnation (against the Unitarians)

 

[From the ordinance of Paul IV, “Cum quorundam,” Aug. 7, 1555]

 

993 [DS 1880] Since the depravity and iniquity of certain men have reached such a point in our time that, of those who wander and deviate from the Catholic faith, very many indeed not only presume to profess different heresies but also to deny the foundations of the faith itself, and by their example lead many away to the destruction of their souls, we, in accord with our pastoral office and charity, desiring, in so far as we are able with God, to call such men away from so grave and destructive an error, and with paternal severity to warn the rest, lest they fall into such impiety, all and each who have hitherto asserted, claimed or believed that Almighty God was not three in persons and of an entirely uncomposed and undivided unity of substance and one single simple essence of divinity; or that our Lord is not true God of the same substance in every way with the Father and the Holy Spirit, or that He was not conceived of the Holy Spirit according to the flesh in the womb of the most blessed and ever Virgin Mary, but from the seed of Joseph just as the rest of men; or that the same Lord and our God, Jesus Christ, did not submit to the most cruel death of the Cross to redeem us from sins and from eternal death, and to reunite us with the Father unto eternal life; or that the same most blessed Virgin Mary was not the true mother of God, and did not always persist in the integrity of virginity, namely, before bringing forth, at bringing forth, and always after bringing forth, on the part of the omnipotent God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, with apostolic authority we demand and advise, etc.  (The Sources of Catholic Dogma, ed. Henry Denzinger and Karl Rahner [trans. Roy J. Deferrari; St. Louis, Miss.: B. Herder Book Co., 1954], 301-2, emphasis in bold added)

 

Scriptural Mormonism Podcast Episode 107: Discussing Ecclesiology and Sacramental Theology (with Jennifer Roach Lees)

 

Episode 107: Discussing Ecclesiology and Sacramental Theology (with Jennifer Roach Lees)

Paul Haffner (RC) on Epiphanius's Silence Concerning the Death of Mary in Panarion 78

  

The question then arises concerning the nature of her passing, and concretely whether she died or not. This issue examines whether she experienced the separation of the soul from the body. The dogma of the Assumption of the Mother of God leaves open the question of whether or not she died. A minority of theologians hold that she did not in fact suffer death. In the late fourth century, we find the earliest known, non-Apocryphal mention of the close of Mary’s life, in the writings of St Epiphanius (315-403), Bishop of Constantia, on the island of Cyprus: ‘Whether she died or was buried we do not know . . . Say she died a natural death. In that case she fell asleep in glory, and departed in purity, and received the crown of her virginity. Or say she was slain with the sword according to Simeon’s prophecy. Then her glory is with the martyrs, and she through whom the divine light shone upon the world is in the place of bliss with her sacred body. Or say she left this world without dying, for God can do what He wills. Then she was simply transferred to eternal glory.’ St. Epiphanius genuinely may have not known, or else he was being careful not to play into the hands of contemporary heretics, the Antidicomarianites and the Collyridians. The former group denied the perpetual virginity of Mary; the latter, erring in the opposite direction, maintained that divine worship should be given to her. To claim that Our Lady died was to give possible fuel to the former heresy (for it was to suggest that the body of Mary was subject to the corruption of the tomb, and thus minimize her prerogatives); to assert that she did not die was to encourage the latter. (Paul Haffner, The Mystery of Mary [Herefordshire, U.K.: Gracewing, 2024], 210-11)

 

Joseph Blenkinsopp on the Expansion of Biblical Books “in the direction of eschatology” by their Authors or Other Prophets

  

. . . beginning about this time, we begin to hear increasingly frequent allusions to earlier prophets and their sayings. At his trial for sedition in 609 Jeremiah was saved by timely appeal to the eighth-century prophet, Micah of Moresheth (Jer. 26:17-19; Mic. 3:12). This incident, by the way, provides one of the firmest pieces of evidence for the expansion of prophetic books in the direction of eschatology and the millenarian expectation. For if Micah's prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem were to have any force when quoted at the trial it could not have been followed then, as it is now, by the prospect of a glorious future. About half a century later the exilic Isaiah ascribed great importance to the fulfillment of predictions by his prophetic predecessors. Shortly after the return, Haggai berated his contemporaries in language borrowed from Amos. He also made use of Jeremiah's metaphor of the king as Yahweh's signet ring (2:23, cf. Jer. 22:24), while Zechariah used the other Jeremian figure of the Branch (3:8; 6:12, cf. Jer. 23:5; 33:15). The prediction of seventy years' exile in Jeremiah (25:11; 29:10) is also taken up by Zechariah (1:12; 7:5) and perhaps also in Haggai's reference to the right time ('et) for rebuilding the temple (1:2). With this process of appropriation and reinterpretation a decisive step has been taken to- wards the "recycling" of prophetic texts in apocalyptic writings of the Greco-Syrian and Greco-Roman periods. (Joseph Blenkinsopp, Prophecy and Canon: A Contribution to the Study of Jewish Origins [University of Notre Dame Center for the Study of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity 3; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006], 102)

 

 Further Reading:

Biblical Prophets Changing their Words and the Words of Previous Prophets

Is the Trinity actually biblical? | Dale Tuggy vs Joshua Sijuwade

 

Is the Trinity actually biblical? | Dale Tuggy vs Joshua Sijuwade

Lutheran Johann Gerhard (1582-1637) Appealing to θεοπνευστος in a Way Similar to Modern Protestant Apologists

  

. . . our adversaries themselves acknowledge a distinction between sacred Scripture, which is theopneustos [θεοπνευστος], “God-breathed,” and the writings of the Fathers, and that the latter are to be tested by the former as by a norm and rule. (Johann Gerhard, Confessio Catholica, The Catholic Confession: Book I General, Volume IV, Part II, Chapter XIII: The Fathers, ed. James D. Heiser [Malone, Tex.: Repristination Press, 2026], 261)

 

Lutheran Johann Gerhard (1582-1637): The Apostles Erred in their Premillennialism and Belief in the Then-Future Return of the Person of Elijah

  

Even the Apostles Erred before Receiving the Promised Spirit

 

Before receiving the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, all the apostles clung to the error of an earthly kingdom of the Messiah. Before Christ’s resurrection, all labored under ignorance of the true meaning of the predictions concerning his resurrection. All maintained that Elijah would return in his own person.

 

But if all the apostles could error before the infallible assistance of the Holy Spirit was given to them, then certainly all the remaining doctors of the Church—to whom that immediate assistance of the Holy Spirit does not belong—can also err. (Johann Gerhard, Confessio Catholica, The Catholic Confession: Book I General, Volume IV, Part II, Chapter XIII: The Fathers, ed. James D. Heiser [Malone, Tex.: Repristination Press, 2026], 15)