This preaching and teaching was not a mere matter of pious fantasizing, but rather it was a careful “handing on” of what had been received. The miraculous birth of Jesus in time was seen as a reflection of the mystery of his eternal generation by the Father. (12) As with all of the most important data which touched on the person of the Son of God, it became progressively clarified by the magisterium. Already during the pontificate of Pope St. Siricius (384-399) this matter was dealt with in the Plenary Council of Capua (392) and in the Synods of Rome and Milan in 393 (13) with St. Ambrose’s teaching on Mary’s “incorruption” in giving birth emerging as authoritative. (14)
In his De institutione virginum St. Ambrose introduced this mystery by quoting the beginning of the forty-fourth chapter of Ezekiel:
“Then he brought me back to the outer
gate of the sanctuary, facing the east; but it was closed. He said to
me: ‘This gate is to remain closed; it is not to be opened for anyone to
enter by it; since the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it, it
shall remain closed.’” … Who is this gate, if not Mary? Is it not closed
because she is a virgin? Mary is the gate through which Christ entered
this world, when he was brought forth in the virginal birth and the
manner of His birth did not break the seals of virginity (quando virginali fusus est partu, et genitalia virginitatis claustra non solvit).
(15) … There is a gate of the womb, although it is not always closed;
indeed only one was able to remain closed, that through which the One
born of the Virgin came forth without the loss of genital intactness (per quam sine dispendio claustrorum genitalium virginis partus exivit). (16)
St. Ambrose’ defense of the “virgin birth,” especially in this
treatise, is so definitive that those who have subsequently sought to
“re-interpret” the doctrine in the light of the criticism of Dr. Albert
Mitterer (17) have found it necessary to take him on. (18)
II. The Magisterium
In 649 the Roman Synod which convened at the Lateran, whose teaching
was approved as authoritative by Pope St. Martin I, anathematized anyone
who would deny that Mary “gave birth to (God the Word) without
corruption.” (19) In his Constitution Cum quorumdam hominum
condemning the errors of Unitarianism Pope Paul IV admonished all those
who deny that the Blessed Virgin Mary “did not retain her virginity
intact before the birth, in the birth, and perpetually after the birth.”
(20) The Roman Catechism also known as The Catechism of the Council of Trent followed suit with this clear teaching:
For in a way wonderful beyond expression
or conception, he is born of his Mother without any diminution of her
maternal virginity. As he afterwards went forth from the sepulcher while
it was closed and sealed, and entered the room in which his disciples
were assembled, although “the doors were closed” (Jn. 20:19), or, not to
depart from natural events which we witness every day, as the rays of
the sun penetrate the substance of glass without breaking or injuring it
in the least: so, but in a more incomprehensible manner, did Jesus
Christ come forth from his mother’s womb without injury to her maternal
virginity. …
To Eve it was said: “In pain you shall
bring forth children” (Gen. 3:16). Mary was exempt from this law, for
preserving her virginal integrity inviolate, she brought forth Jesus the
Son of God, without experiencing, as we have already said, any sense of
pain. (21)
The Second Vatican Council presented this mystery succinctly by
speaking of “the birth of Our Lord, who did not diminish his mother’s
virginal integrity but sanctified it” (22) and the Catechism of the Catholic Church repeats that statement after clarifying that
The deepening of faith in the virginal
motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity
even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. (23)
Those who would say that these recent professions of the mystery are
minimal and non-binding need only examine the footnotes appended to each
of them to discover that they are based on previous major declarations
of the magisterium which have been considered definitive since the
Patristic era. The text of Lumen Gentium cites the Lateran Synod of 649, the Tome of St. Leo the Great to Flavian (24) and the De institutione virginum of St. Ambrose. The Catechism gives two citations to the Tome
to Flavian, (25) as well as citing the Second Council of
Constantinople, (26) the Letter of Pope Pelagius I to Childebertus, (27)
the Lateran Synod of 649, the Profession of Faith of the Synod of
Toledo of 693 (28) and Pope Paul IV’s Constitution Cum quorumdam hominum.http://www.motherofallpeoples.com/2011/12/theological-defense-of-the-miraculous-birth/
more coming...
