And isn’t the virgin birth of Jesus the device by which the church fathers could declare him, and only him, free from “original sin?”
Mary was also free of original sin. That’s what the whole Immaculate Conception is about.
Feh. Weren’t we all.
No. According to RCC doctrine, Mary was, as a result of the Immaculate Conception, also free of original sin.
Right, my mistake. I can only claim ignorance. I was taught most of this stuff in a Methodist church and the only person ever spoken of as free from sin was Jesus. The Immaculate Conception is not part of Methodism.
What does the RCC teach as the justification for the Immaculate Conception? There’s no substantiation of this precept, of which I am aware, in any of the popular version of the Bible.
IIRC, it is necessary for Mary to have been born without original sin, because it was thru Eve that sin entered the world. Thus, since Jesus was born both of God and of humans, His human mother needed to be free from the taint of original sin. Original sin is sort of a sex-linked inherited gene, IOW. 
Mary is the theotokos, the God-bearer, especially in the Orthodox traditions. And Jesus needed a fit receptacle thru which to enter the world.
Much of the veneration of Mary came about during the Byzantine era, and/or may have been in response to other Magna Mater cults.
All this is off the top of my head as I remember it from my History of Religion classes of thirty years ago. And I am open to correction from any genuine scholars.
Regards,
Shodan
Hmmm…Kal, I seem to recall you as being male. If you gave birth, regardless of whether you were a virgin up until that point, you have lucrative career possibilities! 
More seriously, Shodan is pretty much on target. But remember that original sin is an Augustinian concept, not necessarily held by every branch of Christianity.
Given that, though, a question I raised with DDG a while ago becomes significant: Why is the Virgin Birth important to Christianity? Why would not God sending the Messiah as the son of the married couple Joseph and Mary, conceived in the normal way, be quite viable theologically? (Never mind that Scripture testifies to it for the moment; I’m asking for the theology behind it. We can address the implications of the Nativity narratives after dealing with the question of the doctrine’s significance.)
Thank you, Shodan.
In my Catholic childhood, I had a profound devotion to Mary. I prayed the Rosary over and over, and cycled through the meditations on Mary’s “Mysteries” — joyous, dolorous, and glorious — several times over. I kept up my spiritual connection with Mary even for long years after I was no longer Catholic.
During the past few years I have come to understand from whence the devotion — the hyperdoulia — to Mary derived such great strength in the Mediterranean world. I feel it was carried over from the most beloved religion of ancient Rome, that of Magna Mater Deum Idæa, the Idæan Great Mother of the Gods, Cybele. Every people in the ancient Mediterranean world that I can think of (including the Hebrews) had this intense devotion to the Mother Goddess. You just can’t take that away from a people. The Great Mother’s cultus extends further back in time in Asia Minor than anywhere, traceable back to Çatal Hüyük in the Neolithic. Various aspects of this most ancient Goddess known to humanity were taken up by the Greeks in Asia Minor, such as Rhea, Artemis, Agdistis, Gaia, Semele. She also seems to have been the Goddess of Minoan Crete; the Minoans are thought to have originated from Asia Minor. The Romans claimed a similar origin, so to adopt Cybele as the Goddess of Rome seemed natural to them.
Magna Mater’s worship was recognizably continued into Christianity as devotion to Mary. It was perhaps still the strongest in Asia Minor where it had originated. It was the Council at Ephesus that declared Mary “theotokos.” Ephesus had been a center of Goddess worship since Hittite times. Its original Luwian name was Apasas and it was recorded in early Hittite tablets dating to 1500 BC. Roman devotion to Cybele ran deep. Not coincidentally, when a Basilica was built over the site of a temple to Cybele, to occupy the site, it was dedicated to Santa Maria Maggiore.
Santa Maria.
This is the other thing in the other thread that squicked me out and made me want to respond. Why do they feel the need to get so literally anatomical about it? It reminds me too much of cultures where they inspect girls’ hymens before marriage and crap like that to keep women under control.
I tend to be much more comfortable with a mother goddess than a father god. Because to me the ultimate in masculinity does not care either way.
I had a relationship with a girl who was “Inanna” when she was being nice, and “Kali” when she was being nasty. That was a very intense relationship, and introduced me to a lot of different ways of thinking. My current relationship is more on the virgin Mary level.
In my meditations, I can summon up an image of a female entity much more readily than I can a masculine entity. It’s sort of like a looking in the mirror thing. Like the masculine entity is behind my perception, and the feminine entity is looking back at me.
When I speak of “God” I don’t use he, she or it, to describe God, because I don’t think those pronouns do it justice, I don’t use any word that implies gender at all, and that includes gender neutrals, because God is an overarching concept that is beyond that, even though I am male I still encompass masculine and feminine traits, and God is me as well as being beyond me and I wouldn’t want to attach a masculine OR feminine bias to such an entity anymore than I absolutely must.
I will use any archetype that I must to interface with these entities, but more often than not my deities are unique and have commonalities with deities from myth and legend, but are not them.
Erek
Hell, yeah! Why bother with Jehovah when you can hang with the one who was big when he was in short pants and coughing up thunderstorms in Mesopotamia? Gimme the Owl Goddess whose cult goes back tens of thousands of years! (looking at various websites about Her) The Feminists and New-Agers have latched onto Her, too? Crap! Looks like I need a new religion, AGAIN. At least the Mithraists have some good bar-b-que.
Besides, it is NOT official doctrine. It is not discussed, it is a non-issue. I don’t know where it started or where it came from. Maybe it came from someone who has “problems” with sex?
I recall reading one of St. Augustine’s sermons, which made reference to Jesus’ birth not affecting Mary’s ‘physical virginity’. Don’t remember which sermon, though.
Slight distinction: Jesus is sinless by nature, but Mary was protected from personal sin through God’s grace, not through her own effort. Again, according to the Catechism.
No, celibacy was mostly about fear of the offspring of clergy possibly inheriting church land.
Lissla, to be perfectly blunt, I would assume that Augustine was speaking of Mary’s hymen still being intact after birth. Of course, we have to remember that Augustine, while he may have been a greater writer and early church father, most definitely had some issues. (Particularly with his mother, IIRC).
I believe that the phrase in the Middle Ages describing Christ’s birth was “like light thru glass”. And then I believe Mary’s breasts filled up with enough milk to wash our Lord. (I had a professor in seminary who delighted in stories like these. Give him a couple beers and get him going on the martyrdoms of various saints for light-hearted fun at parties.)
As SteveG1 points out, none of this is doctrine.
Regards,
Shodan
I seem to recall (nice and vague, still) ‘like perfume wafting through a veil’. And yes, it did mean that her hymen was intact.
And yeah, not doctrine.
And another common belief is that due to her immaculate state, it was absolutely painless (what with birth pains being part of Eve’s punishment)
(The Biblical Eve, not ours, you know what I mean you wiseacres…)
Of course to the kids learning some of this stuff (neat trick when the Brothers try to not be TOO explicit…) it *&^%$ sounded like Baby J had been beamed out by Scotty from womb to manger.
“Yoni yoni yoni, get your adverbs here… yoni yoni yoni…”
Sorry, I’ve had it stuck in my head all day, and I had to share.
beaming with pride in our little Guin and her wisdom
[Deep Throat]
Follow the money.
[/Deep Throat]
Kinda reminds me of why most nativity sets bug me. Mary just gave birth-and she’s on her knees, looking radiant, beaming at a two year old blond-haired blue-eyed European Jesus.
Please.