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Mucus: Ah. I didn't understand that everything you were saying from that point on only applied to religions with celibate priests or nuns. I'm sorry for hounding you.
BTW, not everybody who believes in the virgin birth believes that the virgin Mary remained a virgin after she got married.
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My understanding is that, although being a virgin was very cool and all (especially later on), the early emphasis on the virgin birth was to establish the Divine nature of Jesus. In other words, it was more about Him than about her.
And tradition, I believe, indicates that she had other children later.
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Mormons tend to lean toward Jesus having at least 3 "half" brothers--James, Joses, and Jude. Also that the book of James in the New Testament was written by James, the brother of Jesus.
quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: Which traditions say that she remained a virgin all her life, Javert?
I'm pretty sure Catholic. At least that's what I remember from Sunday School. My memory could be faulty, of course. And the teaching could have changed between now and then.
I've also seen quite a few Christians become somewhat agitated when it was suggested that Mary ever had sex. Which suggests to me that either those individual Christians' traditions taught that Mary was always a virgin, or those individuals thought it did.
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kmboots is Catholic. Her statements in this thread seem to contradict your generalizations about her religion.
Can you say what traditions those Christians belonged to that were agitated at the notion of Mary having sex? ----
The larger point is that the ignorance about religion in this thread is a little staggering. Why do you reject something you clearly know so little about?
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quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: kmboots is Catholic. Her statements in this thread seem to contradict your generalizations about her religion.
Can you say what traditions those Christians belonged to that were agitated at the notion of Mary having sex? ----
The larger point is that the ignorance about religion in this thread is a little staggering. Why do you reject something you clearly know so little about?
Number 1, I was a Catholic for over 20 years. So I'd like to think I know a little bit about it.
Number 2, nearly everyone has a different understanding of their religion. If I talk to you, kat, about Mormonism, and then go and talk to BlackBlade, and then talk to OSC, are all three of you going to have the exact same answers and understandings? Somehow I doubt it.
Number 3, I lack a belief in every religion someone has presented to me as truth. Note I said I have a lack of belief, not that I 'reject' them. If you have some new religion I've never come across, present it to me and I'll tell you whether I believe it or not.
That being said, one does not have to study at every fashion school in the world in order to see that the Emperor has no clothes.
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Javert, True. There is the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary which came along a bit later. Which was controverisal at the time and remains so.
James is noted in scripture as being the brother of Jesus. Joseph is sometimes described as being childless. Some believe that Mary remarried after Joseph died. Of course even the term "brother" is open to interpretation...
Perpetual virginity isn't what I was taught - but there is a lot of variation in Catholic teaching!
There are arguments either way.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: I'm sorry for hounding you.
BTW, not everybody who believes in the virgin birth believes that the virgin Mary remained a virgin after she got married.
np, I figured it was a misunderstanding
As for the second, I actually checked that one (Mary on wiki)
quote:Those who believe that Mary remained a virgin after the birth of Jesus, including Eastern and Oriental Orthodox and Roman Catholics (and thus an absolute majority of Christians), put forward the following considerations on the question... Muslims also believe that Mary remained a virgin for her entire life.
So not everyone, but a majority, at least according to the source I had available.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: My understanding is that, although being a virgin was very cool and all (especially later on), the early emphasis on the virgin birth was to establish the Divine nature of Jesus. In other words, it was more about Him than about her.
Sure, but we cannot all be Jesus, we don't have the necessary lineage However, we can follow in Mary's footsteps and a great many did and were sanctified for it.
quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: The larger point is that the ignorance about religion in this thread is a little staggering. Why do you reject something you clearly know so little about?
*shrug* We all do. How many of us know the finer points distinguishing the various stages of Egyptian pharaoh-based religion? Or Norse?
You have to realise that my interest in this area is purely academic, it is like studying the sexual practises of characters from the LOTR or something.
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quote:I wasn't referring to the questions, but rather to the assumption you seem to have that an answer only exists if we have the means to discover it.
Since we're talking about epistemology, I think we can limit the set of "answers" to "discoverable answers" for the purposes of the conversation. If it can't be discovered by any epistemology, it's not useful for judging epistemologies.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Javert, True. There is the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary which came along a bit later. Which was controverisal at the time and remains so.
James is noted in scripture as being the brother of Jesus. Joseph is sometimes described as being childless. Some believe that Mary remarried after Joseph died. Of course even the term "brother" is open to interpretation...
Perpetual virginity isn't what I was taught - but there is a lot of variation in Catholic teaching!
There are arguments either way.
There is a lot of variation, isn't there? And a lot of individual Catholic beliefs differ from the Vatican position.
You'd be surprised at how many Catholics I know who didn't learn until quite late that the Immaculate Conception isn't the same thing as the virgin birth.
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I have to say that I have an impression similar to Mucus'. I've always thought that having sex solely for pleasure was frowned upon. My parents, who are both Catholic, agree.
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You will all be relieved that I am not (again!) going to give my dissertation on sex and the Catholic Church. I will say, though, that "sex that is not for procreation" and "sex that is solely for pleasure" are not necessarily the same thing.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I will say, though, that "sex that is not for procreation" and "sex that is solely for pleasure" are not necessarily the same thing.
Now you've got me curious. Sex for money?
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I actually own a book called "Sexuality and the Catholic Church". And kmbboots is right. It's not so much that they're against enjoying sex. But every sexual act must include the possibility of procreation.
According to that book, anyway.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I will say, though, that "sex that is not for procreation" and "sex that is solely for pleasure" are not necessarily the same thing.
Now you've got me curious. Sex for money?
Sex for strengthening the emotional and spiritual bonds in a relationship.
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Fr. Ron Rolheiser, in beautiful essay that I wish I could find online, defines sexuality as, “a beautiful, good, sacred energy given us by God and experienced in every cell of our being as an irrepressible urge to overcome our incompleteness, to move toward unity and consummation with what is beyond us.”
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: And kmbboots is right. It's not so much that they're against enjoying sex. But every sexual act must include the possibility of procreation.
While I puzzle over kmbboots's statement (the one Threads responded to, I think I agree, I'm not sure), I will agree that this is a more accurate depiction than my previous one liner. However, note that there are a fair number of acts that consenting married adults can participate in (three, maybe four? two popular ones anyways, which most would consider to be forms of sex) which do not fulfill that latter qualification. I trust that I do not have to give specific examples.
Also, without proper birth control, a couple will on average definitely be having less sex than the norm for one reason (or the other more unintended one).
In addition I will add that not everything that is not a best case is not a sin either. While being a virgin might be a best case, that does not mean that everything else is "bad" either, just not quite as ideal
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You keep saying that virginity is the ideal for certain classes of people. So far, what those people have said seems to contradict that.
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The apostle Paul thought marriage was probably a bad idea for a lot of people. Since you can't have non-sinning sex outside marriage, then it follows that according to some interpretations of Christian doctrine, many people should remain virgins their entire lives.
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mph: Well, actually they're not. They are contradicting what they "think" I'm saying. Most of the statements that are reactionary seem to be saying, well, no the Catholic Church says that sex can be good. This is a good thing, all power to them. However, this is somewhat only related to the point since sexual behaviour is not rated on a binary pass-fail heaven-hell scheme, if only due to the existence of Purgatory. Instead, it seems that the Church has established a sexual hierarchy from Virgin Mary down to regular virgins to chaste priests/nuns to married couples, to say birth controlled married couples, to unmarried couples to well...burn. What people are saying is that, wait, sex in marriage is good. Well ok, but it doesn't go to the larger point, they have not established proof that the church has said that the married couple having sex is equivalent or equal to the virgin or the chaste clergy.
If I may draw a parallel, restricted sexual behaviour is not the only restriction on the clergy. Being free of worldy possessions is another stemming from the ascetism of the early Christians. However, in the interests of reality not all Christians can be forced to become poor and penniless giving away all their possessions. So now we have a hierarchy from ascetic monks/nuns to generous people giving to the church to not so generous to greedy. There is a spectrum of behaviour. The Church may promote a relatively generous non-materialistic lifestyle for the average folk but there is still a step "better."
If it is any consolation, the appreciation of virginity if we want to call it that, does not start with the Catholic Church. In Rome itself there were the Vestal virgins themselves and even in our language, virginity is a synonym for purity, and innocence. *If* there is any "innovation" it comes from combining the myths of Jupiter seducing women on Earth to produce half-divine men with the idea of a virtuous virgin as the mother (or even at an extreme the perpetual virgin as the case may be).
I hope that admittedly lengthy post clears up some of the confusion from my previous shorter one-liners.
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Mucus, I think that the "spectrum" is not quite so veritical as all that. People are called to different lives, there are different gifts, all parts of the Body of Christ. A hand is not less because it is not a foot. While there is certainly respect for a life devoted to God, a good mother (for example) is not "lower" than a nun.
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Also pretty amusing, the ads for Virgin Mary statues at the bottom of the page. You can get one made of coal! An inspirational stocking stuffer for a bad girl this Christmas?
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No, not too much stuff. Just regular real life activites, I'll try to get through it when I have the time to give a proper reading.
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It isn't just Christopher Hitchens! The entire site is pitched against Romney. Should I be this surprised? Slate doesn't have an anti-horse in the Democratic race. Did Romney fire somebody's mother?
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I know. I don't get it - have they lost their minds? It's completely biased, and at least half the sneering comes at his religion. Who are the doofuses that think that's behavior becoming a "journalist"?
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Well...I don't think Slate's really a news site. It's all opinion, so anything goes.
I roll my eyes at them, but honestly, let's not mistake them for being subject to actual, rigorous, intellectual standards.
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Ditto. Slate does commentary and analysis; qualitatively different from, say, the Wall Street Journal. Furthermore, they're aspiring to the slightly snarky, casual attitude that the Internet (say, Gawker, TMZ, etc) has made profitable.
They're not all that fond of Hillary Clinton either.
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I don't know; they seem to be gearing up toward being anti-Clinton in the same way that they're anti-Romney. I don't have time to get the links, but in the last week or so they've had a string of pieces that evaluate her pretty negatively, and I don't see that stopping.
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