The 40-Year-Old Virgin Mother

Alllllll right. Since yesterday's post was on a touchy sociopolitical subject, I shall now forge ahead to discuss yet another touchy subject: religion. As it stands, this is more a response to a particularly asinine article than an assault on Catholic doctrine, but a fair amount of what I have to say could probably be considered heretical by the Catholic Church.

So,to preface this particular post, I would like to say that I know that many of my readers are Catholics who take their faith very seriously. (And yes, many of you are related to me in one way or another.) Though my tone may be flippant at times (see: the title of this post), I assure you that everything I'm about to say comes from a very genuine place. I wouldn't have such strong feelings on the subject if I didn't consider it important in some way. I mean no disrespect to anyone; I merely wish to discuss my views on what is right, what is wrong, and what is complete bullshit.

So! A little bit of backstory:

Amusingly enough, I wouldn't be writing this post right now if it weren't for a fantastic Onion article about an obnoxiously weepy statue of the Virgin Mary. Reading that put me in a mood to brush up on my Mariology, mostly because I'm a nerd like that. While looking for interesting tidbits on a Wikipedia article about the perpetual virginity of Mary, I pretty much hit the snark jackpot (emphasis mine):

"Contemporary Christian feminists... [claim] that virginity can co-exist with sexual activity that lacks full consent and even that virginity can co-exist with fully consensual sexual activity."

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

The citation leads you to a page where you can view the PDF of this article by Julia A. Feder, a PhD candidate in Theology at the University of Notre Dame. The 33-page piece is entitled "O Virgin of Virgins, Our Mother: A Feminist Reconstruction of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity as a Model for Christian Discipleship", and it's certainly an interesting read. I went into it expecting to disagree with everything she said, but found that we really mainly differed in our conclusions. She discusses Mary and the virgin martyrs Agatha, Agnes, and Lucy in a relatively straightforward academic fashion, with interesting points on how choosing virginity was actually an escape from the patriarchal system, etc. etc.

And then you get to the discussion of virginity itself:

Feder cites Saints Augustine and Ambrose, who say that virginity has an important spiritual aspect--which is all well and good--but both of them also say that virginity is inherently tied to the physical state of not having sex. Both saints also make concessions in cases of rape, with Ambrose stating that "if [chastity] is a good of the mind, it is not lost even when the body is taken by force,” but they're not talking about virginity as such--they're talking about chastity (Ambrose) and holiness (Augustine).

Undaunted by these technicalities, Feder goes on to make the argument that if a woman remains holy and virtuous in her soul, then she can retain her virginity in cases of rape, I-don't-really-want-to-sleep-with-him-but-I-guess-I-will-anyway sex, and "enthusiastically" consensual sex (which requires the presence of a 'yes', rather than the absence of a 'no'). That's right, kids, sexual intercourse and virginity are apparently no longer mutually exclusive! I guess you really can have your cake and bone it too.

Now, I admire the spirit of what Feder is trying to do here--i.e. de-stigmatizing female sexuality in a religious context--but it seems to me that she's missing the entire goddamn point. Allow me to illustrate:

You have apples and oranges. For ages and ages, people think that oranges are inherently superior to apples, until someone comes along with the revolutionary idea that neither fruit is inherently superior because they're both just fruits and honestly, who gives a fuck. This makes sense. What does not make sense is saying that apples are just as acceptable for consumption as oranges because apples can be oranges in spirit.

That is what we like to call batshit crazy, and the same principle is at work here:

At the core of her argument, Feder is making the assertion that engaging in sexual activity does not automatically make you any less holy in the eyes of God. Yes. Bravo. That's the sort of assertion I can get behind support, especially since large portions of the Church seem to view human sexuality through the eyes of a seven-year-old. ("You put what in her where? ...That's icky.") But instead of taking it to the next logical step and saying that being a virgin isn't inherently any better than not being a virgin, we're treated to the profoundly convoluted idea of "the possible concurrence of virginity and enthusiastically consensual sex."

Now, yes, I am aware that there are varying definitions of the word "virgin" (and varying definitions of the point at which virginity is "lost"), but the most common understanding in modern times is along the lines of "someone who hasn't had sex." You can argue for various other technical meanings of the word, but the fact remains that this how the majority of the general public uses the term. This definition is prevalent enough that if you say something like "you can have consensual sex and still be a virgin," people will tell you you're a jackass.

I'm reminded of something C. S. Lewis once said about language: words like "Christian" are perfectly useful and have a concrete meaning, but "once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as they might say 'deepening', the sense of the word Christian, it too will speedily become a useless word." A Christian believes in Christ; the word is not a synonym for "good." Similarly, if we let the definition of "virgin" include "an inward state of purity and holiness," it brings an unnecessary moral dimension into the word instead of just making it a simple statement of fact: "That rock is gray. That World of Warcraft addict is a virgin. That book is blue."

See? It works perfectly.

Basically, either the Church needs a new word or modern society does, because there's not enough room in here for the both of us.

Ahem.

Anyway, this just strikes me as a missed opportunity, beside the obvious missed point. The Church needs to get away from its unhealthy attitudes toward sex, and modern theologians could do a lot to help. Yes, by all means, be pure in spirit, but you can still be pure in spirit and have great sex with your husband/wife/partner. The two aren't mutually exclusive--you won't be a virgin, but there's nothing wrong with that. And lest I be accused of advocating MANDATORY SECKS, there's absolutely nothing wrong with choosing virginity, either. People need to live their faith in unique ways, and should do whatever brings them closer to God.

But come on. The Church is so obsessed with virginity that it retroactively denies Mary, the Mother of God, any sort of sex life whatsoever, even though that has absolutely no bearing on anything at all. Go ahead, tell me what parts of Jesus' ministry would be in any way undermined or made illegitimate by his mother having sex with her husband after the birth of her first child. No, really. I'm dying to know.

No one?

Yeah, that's what I thought.