children, was chosen: “And Joseph [was chosen] … And the priest said to
Joseph, ‘You have been chosen by lot to take into your keeping the Virgin
of the Lord.’ But Joseph refused, saying, ‘I have children, and I am an old
man, and she is a young girl’” (8-9). Nevertheless, St. Joseph humbly
resigned himself to the Lord’s will.
The view of the Protoevangelium (whatever be its historical value) that the
brethren of the Lord were Jesus’ stepbrothers (children of Joseph of another
marriage) was the most popular one until the time of St. Jerome, who
argued that they were cousins instead. Whatever view one takes, any notion
that the brethren of the Lord were other children of the Virgin Mary was
certainly anathema to early orthodox Christianity as can be gathered from
the following statement of Pope St. Siricius:
“Surely, we cannot deny that regarding the sons of Mary the
statement is justly censured, and Your Grace has rightly abhorred it,
that from the same virginal womb, from which according to the flesh
Christ was born, another offspring was brought forth.”¹
The Lateran Council in 649 proclaimed emphatically the perpetual virginity
of Mary:
“If anyone does not properly and truly confess according
to the holy Fathers, that the holy Mother of God, the
ever-Virgin and immaculate Mary, in these latter days,
properly and truly conceived of the Holy Spirit without
seed, namely, God the Word Himself, who was born of
God the Father before all ages, and that she bore Him
incorruptibly, her virginity remain-ing inviolable even
after His birth, let him be condemned.”²
Belief in the Virgin Mary’s perpetual virginity was re-asserted during the
first decades of the Protestant reformation:
“This immaculate and perpetual virginity forms, therefore, the just
theme of our eulogy. Such was the work of the Holy Ghost, who at
the Conception and birth of the Son so favored the Virgin Mother as
1
Accepi Litteras Vestras (to Anysius, Bishop of Thessalonica) 392 AD.
2
Can. 3.
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