I have just been given a link to the straight dope index and have been reading a lot of the columns at once, so I may be repeating old info. According to my sources, the Catholics get around the fact that theBible says that Jesus had brothers and sisters and yet still claim Mary to have been always a virgin by saying that Joseph had more than one wife and the brothers and sisters were children of the other wife. I don’t know of any evidence to support this notion. The Bible says Joseph had no union with Mary UNTIL she gave birth to Jesus (Matthew 1:25). I see no reason that verse wouldn’t stop with" Joseph had no union with Mary" if it meant he never did. God designed marriage, sex, and family and would undoubtedly want Joseph and Mary to have the full marital relationship.;j
Hi, and Welcome to the SDMB! 
A link to the column in question is appreciated, so’s we can all get on the same page, so to speak.
Eh, I’ve never heard any Catholics say this:
What’s your source for that?
I agree with you, as do pretty much all Protestant denominations. The “Jesus had no siblings” view is, I think, based on Catholic tradition and papal declaration rather than biblical information. If I’m wrong, I’m sure someone will be along shortly to correct me.
RR
Whoops! I left off some stuff:
IIRC, James was supposed to be a cousin rather than an actual brother. Here is what the Catholic Encyclopedia has to say about the issue. (See the section on Mary’s Perpetual Virginity about halfway down.)
RR
Reply to Duck Duck Goose
I saw something on a web site that talked about Mary being forever a virgin and wrote the webmaster and asked him about it. I hadn’t realized before then that Catholics thought Mary stayed a virgin after Jesus was born. The webmaster wrote me back with the idea about Joseph having another wife as well as the other interpretation that the words brother and sister could be translated loosely as more distant kin such as cousins. Unfortunately that was some months ago and I know longer have the url or the webmaster’s address. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about, but I freely admit I didn’t check his information anywhere and that I know very little about Catholic beliefs.
Well, saying that “some Catholics like to believe this apocryphal tale” isn’t quite the same thing as saying “Catholics believe this”. What I was getting at was, is it part of official Catholic doctrine, that Joseph had two wives, and that that’s why Jesus could have siblings? AFAIK, it isn’t–is it?
No it isn’t.
It IS hard-core part of Catholic doctrine that MARY had no other children than Jesus. She was chosen to be the Vessel of the Christ and that is to be it for her.
The “usually accepted” explanation from officialist sources is that the “brothers” text is some sort of figurative for “close kinsmen”, preferrably first cousins. Maybe perhaps children of a deceased aunt/uncle that were raised in the Joseph household. Perhaps they were half-siblings from an earlier Joseph marriage. But that is really WAGing.
The apocryphal tale is basically a folktale, part of a common folk belief (seen in such texts as The Cherry Tree Carol) that Joseph was a much older man, and a widower – but it always struck me as a way of (a) explaining how come he is missing-and-presumed-dead by the time Jesus reaches adulthood and most importantly for us (b) retroactively adapting the “casting” of the role to the Catholic (but nonscriptural) doctrine that the marriage to Mary was never consummated. (BTW, IMO it’s a theological copout to offer an “explanation” of age and infirmity to excuse Joe from his marital duties; God could have granted the couple a gift of extraordinary self-control!)
I think Kevin Smith dealt with this pretty well in Dogma. It’s one thing to believe in the virgin birth; but the idea that a man & a woman lived together, legitimately married, for (at least 12) years, & never had sex, even though they could without shame, & were expected to do so–that’s unbelievable.
Maybe that’s why Mark Twain described faith as “believing what you know ain’t so.” 
RE: virgin birth and immaculate conception.
jesus’ birth was the “virgin birth” because mary was given a child through the visitation of the archangel gabriel. he was a child conceived without sex. end of story.
mary was conceived WITHOUT ORIGINAL SIN–that is where the “immaculate” part comes in. my understanding of the story is that mary was granted an immaculate conception so that jesus could be born without original sin. (since the Lord was her father, and since he was not in the garden of eden and never committed the sin, he didn’t pass it on to Jesus either.) the point of all that is that jesus then suffered and died not for his sins, but for the sins of the world.
i’ll be the first to admit the last line doesn’t follow 100% from the explanation. i did co to catholic school for 12 years, though, and that was how the Jesuits in my high school (hi Regis!) explained it. they even admitted it wasn’t perfect, but were very willing to discuss it at length.
i fell should add i’m not a church-going catholic, so no fair jumping on me on that account.
hope that helps. sorry for the long post.
emoryj.
p.s. i wrote this for another post that was closed, but i’m sticking it here so if anyone searches for it they’ll find it.
My boss, who calls himself a cultural Catholic, but is an atheist tells me that Catholics believe Mary was born without sin, which is the Immaculate Conception part, but of human parents. So, the Lord is not her father, but Jesus’ father. He also says that the Immaculate Conception is dogma, but the virgin birth is not. I asked him about the Apostles Creed ("… born of the virgin Mary…"), but he said the creeds are more like standard prayers and not dogma. Personally, I have always wondered what the deal was with Mathew laying out Joseph’s descent, if Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ father.
I’m certainly no expert. Until reading this thread, and the corresponding article, I never knew that Catholics believe that Mary stayed a virgin her whole life. Less you doubt the authenticity of my boss’s description, he has a Ph. D. … in Statistics. So, he is never sure about anything. 
No. The creeds are the core statements of Christian belief (although Christians enjoy brawling over whether the Nicene Creed or the Apostle’s Creed does a better job of laying out the facts). The virgin birth is pretty explicitly laid out in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and is certainly part of Catholic doctrine.
Yeah what **Tom~**said. Maybe what SlowMind’s boss meant to refer to was the IC being “dogma” in the sense of a “catholic-specific” teaching (it being one of two such issued explicitly under Papal Infallibility in modern times) – as opposed to coming straight from scripture as the incarnation and virgin birth. The incarnation and virgin birth of Jesus are articles of faith not just for Catholicism but for most of Christianity.
[ BTW: in Catholic tradition, the parents of Mary were named Joachim and Hannah(or Anne), and they conceived Mary in the usual natural way, only that God miraculously prevented Original Sin from being transmitted]
Okay, so here’s a part that doesn’t make sense. The reason God granted Mary the Immaculate Conception was so Jesus could be born without original sin. What? If he could grant Mary a birth free of original sin even though her parents were normal sinning humans that even conceived her the old fashioned way, then why couldn’t he have just granted Jesus that immaculate birth and skipped Mary? What required Mary to be born free of original sin?
Are things getting a little confused?
I’m not sure, but I don’t think the reasons for the Virgin Birth or the Immaculate Conception are official doctrine in the if-you-don’t-agree-you’re-a-heretic sense. The traditional answer to both, as far as I know, is “because it was appropriate”.
The belief that Mary was without sin is quite ancient. The notion that this specifically included original sin came somewhat later. However, it was well established by the late middle ages (though Aquinas and most of the other Schoolmen rejected it), and has been pretty much taken for granted within RCism for centuries, although it was not made absolutely official until 1854.
In the West, understanding of all this has been somewhat confused for the last few hundred years by sectarian bitterness. Devotion to Mary is much older and more respectable than most Protestants believe, but there has been a much longer and more difficult fight to keep it from spilling over into outright idolatry than most RC’s understand. Ask a modern RC theologian about the term “co-redemptrix” and watch his jaws clench.
<< Devotion to Mary is much older and more respectable than most Protestants believe >>
Yeah, older, like right back to Astarte and Hera and the Earth-Mother goddess of all the pagan religions, he said, grinning and ducking very quickly.
Perhaps we should go to the “source” and inquire what Mary has to say about all this.
In the gospel of Luke, chapter 1 verses 45 and 46, Mary says, "My soul magnifys the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. "
IF Mary were sinless she wouldn’t need a Savior! The fact is that there has been only one person, Jesus, who was sinless. Everyone else, Mary included, needs a Savior.
BTW, if you have been reading and contributing, clearly the Holy Spirit has directed you to this site and this opportunity. Please see Rev. 3:20 and pray for discernment. Thanks.
Jesus was the Savior of all humanity. Therefore, Mary really didn’t get a choice as to whether or not he was her Savior. (I mean would you really tell the Son of God ,“hey, I don’t have original sin so You’re not my Savior.” Especially, when it’s your own child. So whether or not she had sinned didn’t come into consideration. She just automatically joined up with the rest of humanity.
I just wanted to throw this out there for consideration. Considering the time period and the customs of the time, we can probably judge that Joseph was an older man when he married Mary (older men had property and security). And she was probably only in her teens. In addition, the life expectancy of people was pretty crappy, especially if you were peasants. So it may be possible that being older maybe joseph had some “problems” (think Viagra-related). Therefore, it is a possibility that they never consummated their marriage. That’s not a catholic teaching or a protestant teaching or any other teaching that I know of. It’s just an observation of the biological nature of humans. Sorry, if this offends anyone, that was not my intention.