In a letter
to Anysius, bishop of Thessalonica, written in AD 392, Pope St. Siricus
(who reigned as bishop of Rome from 384 to 398) wrote the following, which highlights why the perpetual virginity of
Mary (as well as the rest of the Marian dogmas) are such important topics for
Roman Catholic truth claims:
We surely cannot deny that you were right in
correcting the doctrine about children of Mary, and Your Holiness was right in
rejecting the idea that any other offspring should come from the same virginal
womb from which Christ was born according to the flesh. For the Lord Jesus
would not have chosen to be born of a virgin if he had judged that she would be
so incontinent as to taint the birthplace of the body of the Lord, the home of
the eternal king, with the seed of human intercourse. Anyone who proposes this
is merely proposing the unbelief of the Jews saying that Christ could not be
born of a virgin. For if they accept the doctrine on the authority of priests
that Mary had a number of children, then they will strive with greater effort
to destroy the truths of faith. (The
Church Teaches: Documents of the Church in English Translation [Rockford,
Ill.: TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., 1973], 204)
In other
words, according to this bishop of Rome, if one believes Mary had sexual relations
with Joseph after the birth of Jesus and had other children, (1) they are
agreeing with the faithless Jews of Jesus’ time who rejected the virginal
conception and birth of Jesus and (2) they are denying the faith. Such should
convince one that the perpetual virginity of Mary is not an unimportant area of
study and debate; instead, as it is a defined dogma of Catholicism (while not
defined during the time of Siricus, it was at the time a near-universally
agreed upon doctrine), it is truly
important. Indeed, that is why I spent 50+ pages addressing the best arguments
for and against it in my book-length study of Mariology, coming down on the “Helvidian”
perspective (i.e., the “brothers” and “sisters” of Jesus were biological [half]
siblings of Jesus):
Behold
the Mother of My Lord: Towards a Mormon Mariology (pp. 83-138 deals with the
perpetual virginity).
