{"id":60358,"date":"2016-01-28T05:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-01-28T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=60358"},"modified":"2016-01-28T06:47:34","modified_gmt":"2016-01-28T13:47:34","slug":"st-joseph-virgin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2016\/01\/28\/st-joseph-virgin\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Joseph…virgin?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week I posted an article\u00a0Critics of Matthew Kelly?<\/a>\u00a0where I discussed\u00a0some of the criticisms of Matthew Kelly I’ve seen recently on the Internet. If you recall, there has been some complaints about\u00a0a passage in\u00a0Matthew Kelly’s latest book,\u00a0“Rediscover Jesus”<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Was this some sort of vision, perhaps prompted by the apostles\u2019 grief over their leader\u2019s execution? This wouldn\u2019t explain the dramatic conversion of Saul, an opponent of Christians, or James<\/span>, the once-skeptical half-brother of Jesus<\/span>. – Rediscover Jesus (Page 99)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There was one article<\/a>\u00a0in particular that caught my eye which I thought deserved a short post of its own. It was written by a chap called Jeff\u00a0from\u00a0Traditional Roman Catholic Thoughts<\/a>.\u00a0Jeff’s criticism of the\u00a0passage from the book was as follows:<\/p>\n

“It implies one of two things; either Mary was not a virgin throughout the rest of her life or Joseph had other children…. Mary\u2019s virginity is not even up for debate as the Church declared her perpetual virginity as Dogma. The issue with Joseph having other children is that Catholic tradition holds that he too was a virgin<\/span>.” – Traditional Roman Catholic Thoughts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not really sure how confidently we can say that “Catholic tradition holds that [Joseph]…was a virgin”<\/em><\/span>. It is true that certain Fathers did<\/em> assert that St. Joseph was a virgin, beginning, I think, with\u00a0St. Jerome in the late 4th Century. However, mid-Second Century traditions point to St. Joseph’s having children from\u00a0an earlier marriage. The earliest surviving account of this is the Protoevangelium of James<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The narrative that St. Joseph was a widower is one which is vigorously upheld in the East, among both Catholic and Orthodox Christians. In fact, you’ll notice that in icons of “The Flight Into Egypt” there are often four people depicted: Christ, the Theotokos<\/a>, St. Joseph and also St. Joseph’s son, St. James.<\/p>\n

\"Egypt\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week I posted an article\u00a0Critics of Matthew Kelly?\u00a0where I discussed\u00a0some of the criticisms of Matthew Kelly I’ve seen recently on the Internet. If you recall, there has been some complaints about\u00a0a passage in\u00a0Matthew Kelly’s latest book,\u00a0“Rediscover Jesus”: Was this some sort of vision, perhaps prompted by the apostles\u2019 grief over their leader\u2019s execution? This wouldn\u2019t explain the dramatic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[349,3481,171,2969,2640,1020,3558,2889],"class_list":["post-60358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","tag-charity","tag-dynamic-catholic","tag-evangelism","tag-featured","tag-mary","tag-matthew-kelly","tag-perpetual-virginity","tag-virginity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/JosephFeatured.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60358"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60639,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60358\/revisions\/60639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}