In the Second Century CE the mother of Mary debuted into Christian belief in the Gospel Of St. James. The tale of her conception without sex was cobbled together in the Gospel of James from Greek myths and an Old Testament fable Samuel’s mother giving birthing without enduring penetration by her infertile husband, Joachim. The Holy Roman church furthered the concept by declaring that Mary conceived her son without any assistance from Joseph, thus rendering her free of sin unlike the rest of humanity.
As an altar boy in the early 1960s I helped celebrate the hometown congregation of St. Elizabeth, who is I remember correctly was Mary’s aunt. The nuns tramped us from St. Mary’s of the Foothills into the church. The mass was in Latin and a great mystery to the worshippers ignorant of the dead language. All I understood as ‘mea culpa mea culpa, mea maxima culpa’ or forgive me three times fast with the last one forgive me a lot’. A covert atheist since the age of eight I mumbled the Latin and sang, ‘Oh Mary we crown you with flowers today, queen of the angels. Queen of the May’.
I was good in math and the numbers for the Church were way off. The time between December 8 and Christmas were under a month and most pregnancy lasted nine months, even back in Biblical times. I brought up the discrepancy to my teacher, Sister Mary Magdalene, who subjected me to a palm punishment. Ten slaps of the wooden pointer. As her favorite student she hated the punishment, but the Holy Roman Church had its rules against heresy.
According to Wikipedia The Immaculate Conception went so far as to hold that Anne had conceived Mary by kissing her husband Joachim, and that Anne’s father and grandmother had likewise been conceived without sexual intercourse, although Bridget of Sweden (c. 1303–1373) told how Mary herself had revealed to her that Anne and Joachim conceived their daughter through a sexual union which was sinless because it was pure and free of sexual lust. The Greek church regarded the belief as a Roman novelty and the Muslims said nothing. Coupled with the dogma of the Infallibility of the Pope the Immaculate Conception served as a twin weapon against Marxism and the Red Terror of Communism.
My personal hunch is that Mary was impregnated by a Celtic warrior serving with the Roman warriors, thus explaining Jesus’ depiction as a white man. Mary lied to her husband about the father, who accepted the claim to prevent being called a cuckold or having Mary stoned as a unfaithful wife. Of course that theory is heresy, however one only punished by excommunication and I exiled myself from the Church decades ago.
Still it was a Holy Day of Obligation and we students got the day off thanks to St. Mary and I will always be beholding to her for that miracle.
I missed the feast for another year.
As I will Christmas. Hail Pagans. Merry Yulemas.
ps In Giotto, Meeting at the Golden Gate, 1304–1306 Mary is portrayed as a twelve year-old.
God knows no bounds in his infallibility.
