Our
Lady's Virginity in Giving Birth
In her
interesting
article
"Reproductive
Science and
the
Incarnation"
(Fellowship
of Catholic
Scholars
Quarterly
Vol. 25, No.
4, Fall
2002, 11-25)
Dr.
Catherine
Brown Tkacz
offers a
number of
interesting
correlations
between the
discoveries
of
reproductive
science and
the Church's
belief in
the mystery
of the
Incarnation.
Just as the
Holy Spirit
has
continued to
bring forth
deeper
insights
into the
meaning of
this mystery
(cf.
Dogmatic
Constitution
on Divine
Revelation
Dei
Verbum,
#8), so also
the data of
biological
science,
evaluated in
the light of
Scripture
and
Tradition,
can help us
to marvel at
the
inexhaustible
richness of
the mystery.
The point
is, of
course, that
the mystery
can never be
simply
explained
either by
theology or
by modern
science. At
the end of
her essay
Dr. Tkacz
appropriately
comments
that "the
mystery of
Jesus'
Incarnation
remains
ineluctable
and eternal"
(p. 22).
Without
taking away
from the
valuable
insights
which her
article
provides, I
would
nonetheless
take issue
with Dr.
Tkacz's
treatment of
Mary's
virginity in
giving birth
to Christ
(commonly
referred to
as the
virginitas
in partu)
on p. 21 and
in endnotes
#76 and #78
on p. 25. It
must be
admitted
that the
datum of the
faith that
Mary gave
birth as a
virgin,
unfortunately,
receives
virtually no
attention in
contemporary
catechesis
or
preaching.
Indeed, who can remember having heard of the "virgin birth" of Jesus, and not of his "virginal conception" or of his Mother's "life-long virginity," in a homily in the last forty years?
I. Datum of the Tradition
The fact is that the mystery of Mary's virginity in giving birth to the Savior was preached and taught consistently by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. One finds beautiful expositions of it in the homilies and catecheses of St. Gregory of Nyssa (+ c. 394), (1) St. Ambrose (+ 397), (2) St. John Chrysostom (+ 407), (3) St. Proclus of Constantinople (+ 446), (4) Theodotus of Ancyra (+ before 446), (5) St. Peter Chrysologus (+ 450), (6) Pope St. Leo the Great (+ 461), (7) Severus of Antioch (+ 538), (8) St. Romanos the Melodist (+ c. 560), (9) St. Venantius Fortunatus (+ c. 600), (10) and Pope St. Gregory the Great (+ 604) (11).
This preaching and teaching was not a mere matter of pious fantasizing, but rather it was a careful "handing on" of what had been received. The miraculous birth of Jesus in time was seen as a reflection of the mystery of his eternal generation by the Father. (12) As with all of the most important data which touched on the person of the Son of God, it became progressively clarified by the magisterium. Already during the pontificate of Pope St. Siricius (384-399) this matter was dealt with in the Plenary Council of Capua (392) and in the Synods of Rome and Milan in 393 (13) with St. Ambrose's teaching on Mary's "incorruption" in giving birth emerging as authoritative. (14)
In his De institutione virginum St. Ambrose introduced this mystery by quoting the beginning of the forty-fourth chapter of Ezekiel:
"Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary, facing the east; but it was closed. He said to me: 'This gate is to remain closed; it is not to be opened for anyone to enter by it; since the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it, it shall remain closed.'" ... Who is this gate, if not Mary? Is it not closed because she is a virgin? Mary is the gate through which Christ entered this world, when he was brought forth in the virginal birth and the manner of His birth did not break the seals of virginity (quando virginali fusus est partu, et genitalia virginitatis claustra non solvit). (15) ... There is a gate of the womb, although it is not always closed; indeed only one was able to remain closed, that through which the One born of the Virgin came forth without the loss of genital intactness (per quam sine dispendio claustrorum genitalium virginis partus exivit). (16)
St. Ambrose' defense of the "virgin birth," especially in this treatise, is so definitive that those who have subsequently sought to "re-interpret" the doctrine in the light of the criticism of Dr. Albert Mitterer (17) have found it necessary to take him on. (18)
II. The Magisterium
In 649 the Roman Synod which convened at the Lateran, whose teaching was approved as authoritative by Pope St. Martin I, anathematized anyone who would deny that Mary "gave birth to (God the Word) without corruption." (19) In his Constitution Cum quorumdam hominum condemning the errors of Unitarianism Pope Paul IV admonished all those who deny that the Blessed Virgin Mary "did not retain her virginity intact before the birth, in the birth, and perpetually after the birth." (20) The Roman Catechism also known as The Catechism of the Council of Trent followed suit with this clear teaching:
For in a way wonderful beyond expression or conception, he is born of his Mother without any diminution of her maternal virginity. As he afterwards went forth from the sepulcher while it was closed and sealed, and entered the room in which his disciples were assembled, although "the doors were closed" (Jn. 20:19), or, not to depart from natural events which we witness every day, as the rays of the sun penetrate the substance of glass without breaking or injuring it in the least: so, but in a more incomprehensible manner, did Jesus Christ come forth from his mother's womb without injury to her maternal virginity. ...
To Eve it was said: "In pain you shall bring forth children" (Gen. 3:16). Mary was exempt from this law, for preserving her virginal integrity inviolate, she brought forth Jesus the Son of God, without experiencing, as we have already said, any sense of pain. (21)
The Second Vatican Council presented this mystery succinctly by speaking of "the birth of Our Lord, who did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it" (22) and the Catechism of the Catholic Church repeats that statement after clarifying that
The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. (23)
Those who would say that these recent professions of the mystery are minimal and non-binding need only examine the footnotes appended to each of them to discover that they are based on previous major declarations of the magisterium which have been considered definitive since the Patristic era. The text of Lumen Gentium cites the Lateran Synod of 649, the Tome of St. Leo the Great to Flavian (24) and the De institutione virginum of St. Ambrose. The Catechism gives two citations to the Tome to Flavian, (25) as well as citing the Second Council of Constantinople, (26) the Letter of Pope Pelagius I to Childebertus, (27) the Lateran Synod of 649, the Profession of Faith of the Synod of Toledo of 693 (28) and Pope Paul IV's Constitution Cum quorumdam hominum.
III. Dr. Tkacz' Comments
A. The Miraculous Nature of Christ's Birth
Now back to Dr. Tkacz. She states that:
He (Christ) chose to traverse the birth canal. ... He passed through her (Mary's) cervix. Its strength had kept him securely in the uterus throughout gestation and now it widened to deliver him to wider life. He passed through the vagina, the organ with which every wife knows her husband. Jesus emerged through the labia, the vulva (21).
The good doctor reports as if she were an eye-witness, precisely on the assumption that there was nothing miraculous in the birth process of the Son of God. On the other hand Father Peter Damian Fehlner makes this very trenchant comment:
But on this question, viz. whether the virginity of our Lady in childbirth involves miraculous elements distinct from the virginal conception, there is an even more basic consideration. The Church has always insisted on this, antecedently to any theological reflection on the point. Belief precedes analysis; indeed sets very severe limits on our intellectual curiosity about the details of this singular birth. (29)
In this he is in fact echoing a major address which Pope John Paul II gave on 24 May, 1992, in Capua where he had gone to address a Mariological Congress organized to commemorate the 16th Centenary of the Plenary Council of Capua which had dealt specifically with Mary's virginity in childbirth. On that occasion the Pope stated:
The theologian must approach the mystery of Mary's fruitful virginity with a deep sense of veneration for God's free, holy and sovereign action. ...
The theologian, however, who approaches the mystery of Mary's virginity with a heart full of faith and adoring respect, does not thereby forego the duty of studying the data of Revelation and showing their harmony and interrelationship; rather, following the Spirit, ... he puts himself in the great and fruitful theological tradition of fides quærens intellectum.
When theological reflection becomes a moment of doxology and latria, the mystery of Mary's virginity is disclosed, allowing one to catch a glimpse of other aspects and other depths. (30)
B. The Patristic Testimony
In Dr. Tkacz' endnote #76 she rather lightly dismisses an article by Father Stanley Jaki on the virgin birth because he does not cite any Patristic texts in making his case. She opines that the miraculous nature of the birth of Christ "seems to me essentially modern, based on a pietistic thought that to honor Jesus one must dissociate him from human birth, as if birth were indecent" (p. 25). I trust that by now the reader will recognize that this doctrine is clearly taught by the Fathers (for reasons of space we must forego discussion of the Scriptural bases of the doctrine). Further, the miraculous nature of Jesus' birth is not an indictment of human birth as being "indecent," but rather fully congruent with the saving purposes of the Incarnation. As Pope St. Leo the Great preached:
The Lord Jesus Christ came to take away our maladies, not to contract them; to bring a remedy to our vices, not to succumb to them. ... That is why it was necessary for Him to be born in new conditions (propter quod oportuit ut novo nasceretur ordine). ... It was necessary that the integrity of the One being born preserve the pristine virginity of the one who gave birth. (31)
John Saward's excellent study, Cradle of Redeeming Love, provides several illuminating pages on the fittingness of the miraculous nature of Jesus' birth. (32)
C. The Seal of Virginity
In endnote #78 Dr. Tkacz states "Legend attributes an intact hymen to the Theotokos" and then goes on to quote from Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary that the "rupture or absence (of the hymen) is not evidence of loss of virginity." While a certain sense of delicacy, inspired by the 1960 Monitum of the Holy Office of 1960, (33) makes me hesitate a moment before taking issue with this statement, it needs to be dealt with. On this matter the late Father Juniper Carol, O.F.M. summarized quite clearly how the approach of the Fathers and the magisterium had come to be understood:
At the appropriate time, Our Blessed Lord left the womb of His Mother through the natural channels but in a miraculous way, that is, without in any manner opening any part of Mary's body. In other words, there was no dilatation of the normal passage, no opening of the vagina, no breaking of the virginal hymen. (34)
In less specific biological language the Holy Father treated this issue in his discourse at Capua in 1992. He stated:
It is a well-known fact that some Church Fathers set up a significant parallel between the begetting of Christ ex intacta Virgine (from the untouched Virgin) and his resurrection ex intacto sepulcro (from the intact sepulchre). In the parallelism relative to the begetting of Christ, some Fathers put the emphasis on the virginal conception, others on the virgin birth, others on the subsequent perpetual virginity of the Mother, but they all testify to the conviction that between the two saving events—the generation-birth of Christ and his resurrection from the dead—there exists an intrinsic connection which corresponds to a precise plan of God: a connection which the Church, led by the Spirit, has discovered, not created. (35)
Monsignor Arthur B. Calkins