The Unmentionable Subject
As a young adult I spent a weekend with a friend in country Victoria. That night we discussed some differences between his Catholic faith and my Protestant faith. One subject was the very Catholic idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary, the mother of Jesus. He claimed that the siblings of Jesus, mentioned in the Bible, were Joseph’s children from a previous marriage. I suggested this didn’t in any way prove the perpetual virginity of Mary. The next morning while his Mum was frying eggs and bacon and his father was tucking into his corn-flakes, my friend restarted the discussion of the previous night. I said to him, “Do you really mean to suggest that Joseph and Mary lived together as red-blooded people but in all those years never had sexual intercourse?” My friend’s father choked on his corn-flakes. There was a crash at the stove as his mother dropped the fry-pan. We quickly changed the subject. After bre...