PICKY, PICKY, PICKY

All right, I have held off long enough.  It is time to say something about Roy Moore.  Everything imaginable has already been said, but there is one small insignificant point that I would like to clear up.  Probably you have read or heard about the defense of Moore offered by one spiritually elevated Alabama Republican:

"“Take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus,” Alabama state auditor Jim Ziegler told the Washington Examiner on Thursday."

Needless to say, the liberal blogosphere exploded.  A certain number of commentators, among them Chris Matthews, invoked their Catholic upbringing to point out that Mary and Joseph never had sex, because Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus, and remained so for the rest of her life.

Not so.

The myth about the Virgin Mary is a bit of medieval folklore that got taken up into the official doctrine of the Church, thereby seriously muddying the theological waters.  The Conception of Jesus was, importantly and necessarily, Immaculate [I am speaking now as a Believer, of course, which is to say hypothetically].  All mankind, after Adam and Eve, were born with the stain of Original Sin, a metaphysical condition that made it impossible for any human being, no matter how righteous, fully to obey God’s immutable Law, as handed down to Moses.  The possibility of Salvation required that God’s Law be fulfilled perfectly, and for this to happen, a man, the Messiah, had to be born without the stain of that Original Sin.  Jesus, God’s Own Son, was conceived without the Stain.  He was, that is to say, Immaculately Conceived.  Sex had nothing to do with it, save in the dirty minds of celibate priests.

I know this is a small point, and will not influence the Alabama election, but in matters spiritual I am a purist and an originalist.