When one is reading the Gospels, one may find that it contains more questions than answers, and one might get a little disoriented. Often the members of Protestant sects avail themselves of that feature to try to embarrass and to sow doubts among Catholics. Take for instance the case of the perpetual virginity of Mary: According to Protestants, we could believe that this dogma of the Faith, proclaimed in the First Council of Lateran in 1128 AD, contradicts the Gospel!

 Let us examine, for example, three questions much favored by Protestant (and many modernists alas!) to justify their negation of this dogma of the Faith:

 Troubling questions? But precisely, that’s only what they are: questions! Nowhere in the Scriptures is it said that Mary had other children before or after Jesus was born! Talking of Mary, the Evangelists always call her «the mother of Jesus» (Ex: Jean 2:3); moreover, only Jesus is qualified as being the “son of Mary” (Ex: Mt 2:20-21). Indeed, it is easy to understand that had Jesus have brothers, those would not, as such, have passed unnoticed! And at the moment of His death, He would not have been obliged to give His mother to the care of John, the son of Zebediah! (Jn 19:26-27). We must also add that, from the beginning, the Church of Christ has known about the perpetual virginity of Mary. The Apostles, the disciples, and all those who have lived around Jesus and His mother, could see it with their own eyes. Thanks to their unanimous accounts, and the assistance of the Holy Ghost, this truth became part of Tradition, and has always been transmitted afterwards. One will have to wait around 380 AD for a man called Helvidius, troubled by the same questions as we have pointed out, to doubt about this truth. He soon was refuted par the knowledgeable scholar St. Jerome, who precisely accused him of going against the Tradition of the Church, and against Scripture itself. Now, how can we understand the expressions of the Gospel mentioned above? Let us see them one by one…

 1- Matthew 1:25: This verse tells us that Joseph didn’t carnally “know” Our Lady until she gave birth to Jesus. It only means this: Jesus was not the fruit of a carnal act! Nothing authorizes a conscientious scholar to pretend that Joseph «knew» Mary after Jesus’ birth. Nothing in the Gospel supports such a theory. Let us take an example from the Old Testament that will help us understand how not to interpret the word “until”: King David, in Psalm 109:1 says: “The Lord said to my Lord: ‘Sit at My right hand side, until I put Thy enemies as a footstool for Thy feet’” It is obvious that this messianic prophecy doesn’t want to say that Christ will lose His place of honor at the side of His Father, after the latter will have given Him victory over His enemies!

 2- Matthew 1:25 (second part of the verse) uses the words “first-born.” This is not to say that Mary had other children after Jesus. We are dealing here with a legal term, used in the Jewish Law, concerning a special sacrifice that had to take place after a mother had given birth for the first time, in case of a boy, according to the command of God: “Every male that will be the first to open the womb of his mother shall be mine… Thou shall redeem the first-born of thy sons. Thou shall not appear before me with empty hands.” (Exodus 13: 2+13; 34:19-20). This sacrifice was to be offered on the fortieth day of the purification the mother had to undergo after the birth of a boy (Leviticus 12). It is clear here that this sacrifice had to be made before anyone could know if the mother was going to have other children in the future. St Luke (2: 22-23) is indeed referring directly to this law when he narrates the Presentation of the child Jesus at the Temple.

 3- Matthew 13:55 talks about the “brothers” of Jesus. If we take time to look a bit more into the Gospels, we come to understand that these are in fact the sons of a certain Mary, wife of Cleophas (Alpheus in Greek), and sister to the Virgin Mary. They therefore are simply the cousins of Jesus, and not his brothers. (See: Mt 10:3, 27:56; Mc 3:18, 6:3; Lc 6:15-16; Acts 1:13). Nevertheless, we must not be taken aback by this kind of use of the word “brother” in the Gospel. Indeed we find a good many other instances of such a use in the Scriptures: Lot, Abraham’s nephew, is called his “brother” in Genesis 11:27 and 14:16. Jacob, in Genesis 28:5 and 29:12, calls his uncle Laban “brother”, and Laban will do the same towards him in Genesis 29:15.

All of this shows us that we must never forget that the people, customs, and languages that we find in the Bible are very different from our own, and that we must take that into account when we face a difficult verse. We must not too quickly jump to conclusions, or being troubled by the tales of the sectarians, who think they understand the Bible, but who in fact do not have the tools for that, since they are not members of the Church of Christ, which is the only one receiving the help of the Holy Ghost.

If you desire to study that question more in depth, you can read the Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas (Tertia Pars, Quest. 28, Art. 3), and the commentaries made by Rev. Fathers J. Renié s.m. (“Manuel d`Écriture Sainte”) and Georges Leo Haydock (his Bible in English, republished by “Catholic Treasures”).