The Catholic Church and Mary

You have done great damage to the Catholic Church in general and to the Blessed Virgin Mary in particular. (“The Catholic Church​—Its View of Sex,” November 8, 1985) You wrote that the “dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary perpetuates the idea that sexual relations are unclean.” This is heresy. The dogma of perpetual virginity perpetuates that Mary and Joseph individually took vows before marriage of chastity, which they both kept forever. Later you say that Jesus had real brothers and sisters in his family. This too is heresy. If Jesus had other brothers and sisters, why, when he was dying on the cross, did he entrust his mother to a friend rather than a relative?

Sexual relations between married persons are not unclean. (Hebrews 13:4) It does not damage or degrade Mary at all to state that following the birth of Jesus, she started to have sexual relations with her husband Joseph and had children by him. The Bible does not say that Joseph and Mary kept a vow of chastity forever. “The New American Bible” (a Catholic translation) states at Matthew 1:25 regarding Joseph and Mary: “He had no relations with her at any time before she bore a son, whom he named Jesus.” A footnote in this translation says: “The evangelist emphasizes the virginity of the mother of Jesus from the moment of his conception to his birth. He does not concern himself here with the period that followed the birth of Jesus.”