Opinion of the American Apostolic Old Catholic Church

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

My only disagreement with them really that they reject the Immaculate Conception and Mary's Assumption into Heaven.

By and large, I find the Mariology of the Catholic Church problematic, and generally abiblical. Both the Immaculate Conception and the Perpetual Virginity act to deny the humanity of not only Mary, but of Jesus, and to me the Crucifixion is a meaningless mockery unless Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. The Assumption into Heaven is largely driven by the desire to make Mary more divine than is needed for her to be the Theotokos, but at least has Biblical precedent in Enoch and Elijah, so while I don't see the necessity of that doctrine, it doesn't bother me either.

In any case, it's not those particular doctrines that the Old Catholic Churches reject, but the doctrine of papal infallibility that added those doctrines to the dogmata of the Roman Church.

Having been proclaimed outside a truly Ecumenical Council, her Immaculate Conception and her Assumption into Heaven are not recognized as dogmata by the AAOCC. Nonetheless, these doctrines are traditional and venerable and they are incorporated into our teaching, liturgy, and piety.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

My only disagreement with them really that they reject the Immaculate Conception and Mary's Assumption into Heaven.

By and large, I find the Mariology of the Catholic Church problematic, and generally abiblical. Both the Immaculate Conception and the Perpetual Virginity act to deny the humanity of not only Mary, but of Jesus, and to me the Crucifixion is a meaningless mockery unless Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. The Assumption into Heaven is largely driven by the desire to make Mary more divine than is needed for her to be the Theotokos, but at least has Biblical precedent in Enoch and Elijah, so while I don't see the necessity of that doctrine, it doesn't bother me either.

In any case, it's not those particular doctrines that the Old Catholic Churches reject, but the doctrine of papal infallibility that added those doctrines to the dogmata of the Roman Church.

Having been proclaimed outside a truly Ecumenical Council, her Immaculate Conception and her Assumption into Heaven are not recognized as dogmata by the AAOCC. Nonetheless, these doctrines are traditional and venerable and they are incorporated into our teaching, liturgy, and piety.

If I recall the way Nathan explained these things to me, the basic idea of Catholic Mariology is that these things may or may not be true, but it is 'appropriate' for the woman who birthed God to have been sinless and possessing divine-like qualities. You'll also have the occasion small-c catholics like me who aren't a great deal concerned if it's true or not but view it necessary for Christians to have a motherly figure in addition to a fatherly figure, not to worship, but to venerate.

I have some sympathy with the desire to have a motherly figure to venerate, but:
   a) that need not be the Theotokos,
   b) even if did need to be the Theotokos, it doesn't require denying her being human.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Nathan, have you ever read the Protoevangelium of James? That's the primary source for the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary.  It'd be one thing to hold that Mary never had sex, but according to that text, Mary was physically a virgin, with an intact hymen, even after giving birth to Jesus. Altho, I suppose the temple curtain she wove prior to being wed to Joseph could be viewed as a symbolic hymen that would be rent upon the death of Jesus, thus marking the birth of a new age. However, even with that literary conceit, the whole episode pretty explicitly denies the humanity of at least one, if not both Jesus and Mary. Tho, there are plenty of non-theological reasons for rejecting the Protoevangelium. The principal reason is that if the childhood of Mary had indeed been as described in it, she and Joseph have been major Judean celebrities of the 1st century BC and not an obscure Galilean couple as described in the Gospels.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Mary was physically a virgin, with an intact hymen, even after giving birth to Jesus.

Which is as ridiculous as the "like light sliding through glass" phrase arguing Mary had no birth pains.

Yes; I've read the Protoevangelium several times and there are good reasons why it's not canonical. That doesn't make Ernest's insistence that the perpetual virginity of Mary ipso facto renders her other-than-human make any more sense to me.

I like the perpetual virginity dogma because it makes Mary and Joseph out to be real weirdos (a sexless marriage would not have been seen as ideal or even as desirable, for anybody involved, in Second Temple Judaism). Real weirdos are, or should be, the demographic core of the Christian religion.

Not really.  Christianity has always aspired to be a religion for everyone, not a select few.  We can't all be weirdos, because if we were, then our weirdness would be normal instead of weird. Indeed, the Pauline/Gnostic idea that celibacy rather than chastity should be seen as the Christian ideal strikes me as exceedingly flawed.  Jesus told the woman taken in adultery to go and sin no more, not to have sex no more.

Indeed, Christian sects that advocated celibacy for all, such as the Shakers, have repeatedly died out.

The Song of Songs can certainly be viewed in an allegorical fashion, but to treat it as purely allegory is misinterpreting the text. The corporeal and sensual are not wicked of themselves.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Mary was physically a virgin, with an intact hymen, even after giving birth to Jesus.

Which is as ridiculous as the "like light sliding through glass" phrase arguing Mary had no birth pains.

Yes; I've read the Protoevangelium several times and there are good reasons why it's not canonical. That doesn't make Ernest's insistence that the perpetual virginity of Mary ipso facto renders her other-than-human make any more sense to me.

I like the perpetual virginity dogma because it makes Mary and Joseph out to be real weirdos (a sexless marriage would not have been seen as ideal or even as desirable, for anybody involved, in Second Temple Judaism). Real weirdos are, or should be, the demographic core of the Christian religion.

Not really.  Christianity has always aspired to be a religion for everyone, not a select few.  We can't all be weirdos, because if we were, then our weirdness would be normal instead of weird.

Not what I was getting at but okay.

Indeed, the Pauline/Gnostic idea that celibacy rather than chastity should be seen as the Christian ideal strikes me as exceedingly flawed.  Jesus told the woman taken in adultery to go and sin no more, not to have sex no more.

Yes; and this has to do with Mary why, exactly? The doctrine of the virgin birth is not of Pauline or Gnostic origin, and the perpetual virginity of Mary is an application of the same underlying logic as the virgin birth.

Indeed, Christian sects that advocated celibacy for all, such as the Shakers, have repeatedly died out.

I've been to the last remaining Shaker village, in Sabbathday Lake, Maine. It's a fascinating place, and a sad one.

The Song of Songs can certainly be viewed in an allegorical fashion, but to treat it as purely allegory is misinterpreting the text.

Well, yes, everything in the Bible has both allegorical and non-allegorical interpretations. However, with the Song of Songs the problem I encounter far more frequently than excessively allegorical readings is people rejecting the allegorical level in favor of adolescent snickering at the ~plain meaning of the text~.

The corporeal and sensual are not wicked of themselves.

I don't think anybody in this thread would ever suggest that they are.

The Perpetual Virginity of Mary has far more to do with Christology than Mariology.

At its core, it's about the Christ not being a physical, living, creature. Whether Mary was a relatively normal young girl who remained a physical virgin because Jesus was never physically incarnated as the Gnostics maintained or she was supernaturally inhuman so that she could bear Christ, (Hence the need for her Immaculate Conception in Catholic Mariology.) and as physical sign of that was granted the accident (in the philosophical sense) of being perpetually virginal, is beside the point.  The need for the dogma of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary has absolutely nothing to with embracing celibacy either as an alternative mode or as a preferred mode of existence, but everything to do with making the Christ be noncorporeal because it would be gross for the Divine to be made out of corrupt matter. That's a decidedly Gnostic POV and I despise self-loathing Gnosticism more than any other heresy. Indeed, tho it would imperil my immortal soul, if I were a Medieval inquisitor, then to help Gnostics divest themselves of the corporeal body in which they believe themselves to be trapped, I'd cheerfully assist them by burning them at the stake. (I wouldn't do that today because of air pollution concerns.)

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Christianity has always aspired to be a religion for everyone, not a select few.  We can't all be weirdos, because if we were, then our weirdness would be normal instead of weird.

Institutions founded for weirdos can perfectly easily accommodate normal people, but the opposite is usually not true. If you want to be "for everyone", you have to have the weirdos in mind.

This is exactly what I was getting at, yes.

Anyway, Ernest can insist that orthodox Mariology is somehow Gnostic as much as he likes, but I just don't think it's so. By the time most of the Marian dogmas developed in their modern form Gnosticism had had its day and it was other heresies the Church was reacting to.

Catholic Mariology comes from the same core viewpoint of seeing our corporeal existence as irretrievably corrupt as Gnosticism, tho I will grant it has a different line of development and no interest in "secret wisdom" that could free those worthy of such knowledge from our corrupt corporeal cosmos. That said, the noncanonical Protoevangelium that is the basis of much Catholic Mariology is a 2nd Century text written well before the decline of Gnosticism.

Also, just to repeat myself, while I find the Assumption unnecessary, it doesn't bother me like the Immaculate Conception and the Perpetual Virginity do, since there are other Biblical examples of people being assumed into Heaven, just no scriptural support for it happening to Mary.

But back to the Perpetual Virginity, the logical gymnastics used to discount the import of Matthew 1:25 as arguing against Mary and Joseph not seeking to be fruitful and multiply after the birth of Jesus are impressive, but unconvincing as far as I'm concerned.