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.
3 comments:
Another theory: Mary thought up the whole idea of the Immaculate Conception when she found out she was pregnant and had not yet slept with Joseph. The poor dumb non-union carpenter bought it.
Is this to say that The Fall, or Original Sin, was about sex and not the sin of disobedience?
No, no, Jerry, of course it was disobedience Labor and childbirth were the punishments for the sin.
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