A reader writes:
It’s always a bit awkward for me to email bloggers in response to their work, since I feel like I know a certain amount about you, whereas you know nothing of me. Nonetheless, your Sheavings have been quite helpful in my conversion to the Church. I grew up Evangelical (of the question-asking, apologetics-and-Powerpoint persuasion, rather than the proclaim the Holy Spirit louder and the world will change variety) but was received into the Catholic Church a year ago. Both I and my parents have found your thoughts on Mary to be very helpful in understanding. Your descriptions of the Evangelical feelings and views are, I suppose unsurprisingly, spot-on.
But as my (cradle-Catholic) girlfriend and I consider getting married, we are trying to figure out how to make sense of marriage in light of Catholic Tradition. Your post on “The Perpetual Virginity of Mary: Mary the Virgin Mother” did some of the work by confronting contemporary worries about virginity, but it seems to me there is something hard to grasp in the “marriage good, virginity better” line of thinking. The hard thing for me is not that people have different callings and those may be of different worth in some sense, but that virginity as sign of purity (of faith or whatever) seems to imply marriage/sexuality as sign or sacrament of impurity.
On the one hand, of course, the Incarnation is precisely about God entering (shockingly) the impurity of our sin-saturated world. So, maybe being called to a sacrament of impurity is the kind of death that imitates Christ (in fact, God’s making people pure that they may become Christ’s bride is integral to the sacrament)—but this still seems like an odd way of thinking about it, especially since at least some of the rhetoric in defense of virginity currently is that it is for the sake of a pure marriage (i.e., it is either for something else [marriage] or is a species of something else [chastity]).
On the other hand, it is not at all clear what the non-impure/non-pure vision of marriage might be. And it seems like the “marriage as impurity” way of thinking has a long Church history: from the uncleanness of women in the Mosaic law to the Protoevangelium’s account of Mary giving birth through her ear so that her hymen might remain intact (since that’s the most important thing about virginity!). I’ve never been married, so maybe it just becomes obvious in the daily life of marriage how it is a kind of impurity or lack of purity, but do you have any suggestions for lines of thinking here? Virginity as sign of purity + marriage/sex as sign of union = pure union? Or marriage/sex as redemptive of the impurity of the world (whatever “women shall be saved through childbearing” means)?
I suspect part of the problem may arise from the tendency of Protestant culture to think in terms of “either/or” as distinct from the Catholic habit of thinking in terms of “both/and.” Both approaches are necessary, of course, depending on the question at hand. So either Jesus is God or he is not is a perfectly sound question for a Catholic to ask. Likewise, a Protestant will typically recognize that Jesus is both God and man. But the habit or posture of Protestant culture is to posit oppositions where none may exist just as the habit of Catholic culture is to try to figure out how to embrace a very wide variety of ideas as somehow compatible with Catholic faith.
In this case, I think the either/or gremlin may not be serving you well. For I don’t see at all how the distinction “marriage good/virginity better” leads to the conclusion “that virginity as sign of purity (of faith or whatever) seems to imply marriage/sexuality as sign or sacrament of impurity.” It seems to me to be an “either/or” assumption that is in no way implied from the Church’s teaching on marriage. Indeed, a “sacrament of impurity” is a non sequitur since sacraments are gifts of God meant to give us the very life of God. One might as well talk of a “dirty Eucharist” or say that because water is clear and wine is not, the implication is that baptism is purer than the Cup.
I think a better way to approach the matter is to take natural symbols for what they are and not pit them against one another. Water is a natural symbol of baptism. It cleans, washes, drowns, kills, and gives life. Wine does not do these things. So we do not baptize in wine, but water. That does not make water “pure” and wine “impure.” It makes it the natural symbol for what baptism is. Likewise, wine is the natural symbol for what the Eucharist does. It is convivial, it brings joy, it inebriates, it is the companion of happy fellowship. So we consecrate wine and not water at the altar. It is the natural sign of what is being spoken.
In the same way, the marriage bed speaks certain truths to us about the joy of the Bridegroom and the Bride. It is intimate. It is ecstatic. From it, new life proceeds. In it, bridegroom and bride are made one flesh in the fullest way possible. Nothing about that is impure, which is why it is a sacrament.
But at the same time, the Christian tradition takes a turn that ancient pagans failed to negotiate. The Church recognizes that sex is a sign, not the reality. It is sacramental, but it is never proposed as the sacrament of the altar. So the Church does not establish Dionysic rites in which union with God is achieved by sexualized rites with a cult prostitute, for instance. In short, the Church does not become a cult devoted to the worship of sex because it worships and serves God, not creatures. That’s not because sex is impure. It’s because sex is a raging fire that will burn out of control once you remove it from the only safe place it can be found: the fireplace of the marriage bed. Kept there, it is as pure as virginity.
What’s interesting is that virginity, as well, can become “impure” when it escapes the discipline of the Church. Various sects in the history of the Church have become as obsessed with virginity as pagans have become obsessed with sex. They have denigrated the sacrament of marriage as evil and, from time to time, had to be opposed by their principal enemy, the Church because what lies behind them is a hatred of the body and the Incarnation. (Note the great Both/And of Catholic teaching at work there.)
Antiquity generally put much more stress on virginity, particularly as heretical Christians (think “Tertullian”) hived off into rigorism. So yeah, you do get stuff like the Protoevangelium of James —but you also note that the Church does not canonize it. These days, you get a lot of Catholics who have no use for virginity—and the Church likewise resists them. This is why the magisterium is so handy. It keeps you on an even keel while various Catholics are blown this way and that by various cultural enthusiasms. The day may well come when virginity is again all the rage and sexuality is despised as evil. As Chesterton notes, the world does not progress: It wobbles. Meantime, however, what the Church tends to do is propose paradoxes to us like “marriage good/virginity better” and then challenge us to hold fast to both poles (note the Both/And thinking again) rather than pit them against each other or sacrifice one for the other. This is, I think, one of those places.
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Wait, what? “the Protoevangelium’s account of Mary giving birth through her ear so that her hymen might remain intact.”
I thought the Protoevangelium was this verse “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15).
Did I miss something?
I would note that the Roman world had a sacred place for virginity as well, in the cult of Vesta. Someone (I forget who) observed that the pagan world at least viewed virginity as a desirable purity symbolic of the divine, whereas the modern world has no place for either.
@Jeanne G : The reader is talking about the Protoevangelium of James, a non-canonical “Gospel” that claimed to have been written by James the Apostle, but which the Church defines as a complete fake. However, I think the reader is partially mistaken : the Protoevangelium does insist that Mary was (and remains) a virgin before, during and after the birth of Christ (this particular element being an infaillible teaching of the Church, but I don’t think the “birth through ear” is mentioned in this fake Gospel.
The Church teaches that Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus and that she remained a virgin afterwards, but does not elaborate on the way this miracle occurred?
@Jack Perry : very true. However, the priestess of Vesta did not make a perpetual vow of virginity, only a temporary one : they had a “retirement age” (between 26 and 40) after which they could get married.
Very nice commentary, Mark.
What also strikes me as critical is understanding the interconnectedness of the two signs - virginity for the sake of the Kingdom and marriage. They both require the virtue of chastity to live, and both point to the same eternal reality of Heaven or eternal union with God (i.e. holiness). Absent the strength of sexual self-possession, the gift of self (love) cannot be made. Absent that supreme value of eternal union with God, they both devolve from icon to idol.
The teaching and understanding of the relationship of virginity for the sake of the Kingdom to marriage has ebbed and flowed over the last 20 centuries emphasizing one over the other, so it is easy to find some pretty disparaging commentaries on one or both vocations (though usually on marriage). Certainly now, marriage is better understood as a vocation to holiness. That there is no marriage in heaven is the acknowledgement that the sign of personal communion is no longer needed once it has delivered us to the reality of Personal union. Those responding to the call to virginity for the sake of the Kingdom are living that eternal Personal union (“marriage of the Lamb” Rev 19:7)...now, making the sign of sexual union pointless - or worse - contradictory.
While each vocation truly relies and depends on the other, virginity for the sake of Heaven is objectively “better” than marriage because it more closely corresponds to our eternal marriage to Christ: Heaven.
The one thing that isn’t touched upon here is that not all sex between a husband and a wife within marriage is pure. It can be a real struggle in this over-sexualized day and age to keep sex within a marriage pure. I never realized this back in the early days of my marriage when I was on the birth control pill (when our “marital embrace” was virtually identical in every way to the “dirty sex” my husband and I had been having before marriage). However, after nine years of marriage, I came across John Paul the Great’s Theology of the Body, and I started to realize what sex within marriage was *supposed* to be like (not the mechanics, of course, but the attitude)—and I was blown away! It makes all the difference in the world to invite God into your marital embrace and to aim to give of yourself to your spouse and your Creator instead of making sure you get the maximum physical pleasure from the experience. Perhaps initially it’s not as much “fun”, but it’s so much more beautiful, spiritual, and deeply satisfying—not to mention unifying. But, as I started out this post with, it’s a bit of a struggle in thie over-sexualized world to keep the “gutter” mentality out of the marriage bed; I know it’s a real struggle for my husband especially….
LOVELY. Great explaination. Thank you!
Thank you. I especially appreciate the description of sex as a fire and being kept safe in the marriage bed. That is so true.
Perhaps too, a better understanding of the idea of “unclean” might help. It didn’t necessarily mean that one had come into contact with something bad; it could just as often mean that one had come into contact with something so holy that one’s own unworthiness was highlighted. That’s why we speak of “purifying” the vessels used at Mass - not because the chalice is somehow defiled by being in contact with the Precious Blood, but because it has to be brought back to less-exalted use (like being stored in a cupboard). Sexuality is the same, given that it is a channel of grace in marriage and is the means the Lord and Giver of life uses to bring a new immortal soul into existence. Thus that Old Testament recognition of a certain “unworthiness” when cooperating with that power.
I would add that purity is as essential to marriage as it is to celibacy. A celibate person lives purity by staying true to his or her commitment to celibacy, in both mind and body. A married person lives purity by reserving his or her mind and body for only his or her spouse.
St. Augustine has a good rule: sex for procreation is good; sex to prevent your partner from sinning is ok, but suspect; sex solely for pleasure is an unutterable depravity. I find this rule works well. Want to learn about marital virginity? Keep posting the details of your personal life on the internet. But seriously, I pray sincerely for the success of your marriage - remember, a man will always be a guest in his wife’s house.
Damon C makes a good point about why marriage is good and virginity better:
“While each vocation truly relies and depends on the other, virginity for the sake of Heaven is objectively “better” than marriage because it more closely corresponds to our eternal marriage to Christ: Heaven.”
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/a-question-about-virginity/#ixzz1Sw5uaB00
I can add another point: virginity is “better” in the sense that it is the renunciation out of love for God of a great good: marriage. There is no particular meaning in renouncing something bad or unclean or impure for the sake of God: that is simply being faithful to God. A sacrifice for love is only real if something really good is sacrificed. What gives virginity its meaning is that it is the sacrifice, out of love for God, of one of the greatest natural goods that God gave Man in the beginning, a blessing that “was not forfeited by original sin or washed away in the flood” as the wedding liturgy puts it.
It should be pointed out that the Protoevangelion of James may not be Scripture, but it has a VERY prominent place in the Sacred Tradition of the Church. The Orthodox Churches have long relied upon much in the Protoevangelion, and have accepted the work as a mostly reliable and edifying exposition of the Life of Our Lady, supplementing the Scriptures’ relative silence on the subject. The Protoevangelion became a source for some of the Liturgical Feasts (and the texts for those feasts) celebrated in the Orient, which feasts then travelled Westward over time (sometimes bringing the texts from Eastern Troparia and Kontakia into the Latin Church’s Antiphons on the Gospel Canticles and other special celebrations). Both the Latin and Greek Churches are indebted to the Protoevangelion in many ways. Even the iconographic tradition of East and West nodded the head to the Protoevangelion in certain rules of how to depict the Nativity of our Lord, the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord (i.e., the Purification of the Blessed Virgin), etc.
The Protoevangelion does not teach that the Virgin gave birth through the ear canal; in fact, the story does not go that the Virgin *gave birth* through the ear, but that She *conceived* through the ear, as She heard the Archangel’s greeting and received it with obedient faith. This highly symbolic and theologically rich meditation goes back to a text attributed to St. Ephrem the Syrian, where he said: “Through her ear, the Word entered and dwelt secretly in the womb.” This idea of the Conceptio per Aurem was highly utilized by Latin authors in the Middle Ages.
It does, in fact, remain the Tradition of the Church that the Virgin gave birth without labor pains, and without the physical destruction of her hymen. That she gave birth without labor pains, is somewhat related to the Church’s teaching on why virginity is preferable to marriage. Namely, the Fathers teach that while sex (within marriage) is not “a sin,” it is still “bound up in sin,” i.e., bound up in the Fall. This should not offend us too much, however, since the need to eat and drink, and to engage in discursive thought (as opposed to an instantaneous and noetic perception of things), and many other innocent human activities, are more or less bound up in sin. But the Fathers thought this was true of sex in a special way, since the intense pleasure of the act was almost impossible to separate from concupiscence, even when sex is used properly. Therefore, even though fallen human nature remains good, despite its fallenness, certain evils predate upon the goodness of our natures to a greater or lesser degree.
Thus, the fathers teach that marriage and sex were introduced after the Fall, as a direct result of our fallen, but *still fundamentally good* nature, with a specific purpose of furthering the race until the Messiah should come. After this point, the Fathers said that the blessing upon marriage remained in effect, but pointed to the fact that the major reason for its institution had come to pass, and they therefore encouraged Christians to try to strive for the heights of virginity. Those who embraced the ascetic life rendered their food less appetizing, endeavoured to take less sleep, and endeavoured to engage in contemplation more than in discusive thought. Since sex was a pleasure which could not be comparably mitigated - and for many reasons besides this - the ascetics gave up sex completely. These ideals came to mark a sort of permanent standard for those who undertake the religous life, and hence it is expected that monks, nuns and other clergy must remain celibate, or, in the Orthodox Church, married priests and deacons must still exercise great self-discipline in this regard, especially in conjunction with celebrating the Mysteries.
But, as I say, we must be absolute in our refusal to turn the complications of human sexuality into grounds for denigrating marriage. Mark Shea is absolutely correct in stating that the Church affirms the goodness of marriage, even as it encourages Christians to strive for greater abstinence and mortification, holding up the examples of the vast majority of Saints (and Our Lord and Our Lady) as examples in Virginity and all other excellencies. It is a both/and situation. Marriage is good and permitted; virginity is great and specially lauded. And, in fact, the Fathers say that if we attack marriage, we attack virginity; this is so, because the Fathers say that one of the chief glories of virginity, is that it surpasses even so good a thing as marriage. Therefore, the excellence of virginity stands upon the goodness of marriage. Diminish marriage, and you diminish virginity.
These issues are very difficult for people to understand nowadays, especially after the Sexual Revolution. But, thank God for the Sacred Tradition, which leads us to better paths than those taken by the world at large. In fact, it leads us to strive to follow in the footsteps of Christ, and I’d far rather go where that road takes me, than where the path of the worldly-wise finally end.
“sex for procreation is good; sex to prevent your partner from sinning is ok, but suspect; sex solely for pleasure is an unutterable depravity”
Seriously? That’s a sad way to think about the unitive aspect of sex in marriage. If we’re not trying for a baby or we know we’re not in a fertile time (thank you, NFP) and we have sex because we really enjoy that activity with each other, it’s an “unutterable depravity”?? That strikes me as particularly scrupulous, and those guidelines would be potentially damaging to many marriages I know (including ours).
I very much hope that this is a bad paraphrase of Saint Augustine and not something he actually said, though I’m too busy cooking supper for the children to look it up now.
Rebecca: I don’t know if it’s paraphrased or not but I agree with the “
sex solely for pleasure is an unutterable depravity”. No one’s saying that if you enjoy sex you’re a depravate, it’s saying that if you have sex SOLELY for pleasure it’s bad because you’re objectifing your spouse. If you’re using NFP to avoid pregnancy for valid reasons you’re being open to life, and if you’re not using your spouse as a tool for gratification but are giving a gift of self to each other, out of love, then you are giving sex it’s proper place in marriage, wether you enjoy it or not.
The ‘both/and’ idea of this balancing act between marriage and virginity reminds me of a passage in Chesterton’s ‘Orthodoxy’: Christian ethics is like “the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic.” Nothing highlights the value of marriage as much as the light of virginity, which throws it into a sharper relief. They’re like two different horses lashed together, but pulling in the same direction. After all, if sex wasn’t inherently a good thing, people wouldn’t gasp at the thought of giving it up for life.
D’oh! This is an even better quote from later in the same chapter, being exactly on point (Mark, I’m sure you won’t object to a double dose of GKC): “It is true that the historic Church has at once emphasised celibacy and emphasised the family; has at once (if one may put it so) been fiercely for having children and fiercely for not having children. It has kept them side by side like two strong colours, red and white, like the red and white upon the shield of St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred of pink.”
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