The virgin's cervix, and other problems
Courtesy the Chr. Today weblog, a story about retired Catholic priest who was punished for mentioning Mary's reproductive system in a Christmas Eve sermon. The 77-year-old priest said he was trying to make congregants understand the reality of Jesus -- whom Christian doctrine asserts was both fully human and fully divine -- when he said "When the baby Jesus came out (of Mary), he was a man, just like us."
The Chr. Today blogger seems sympathetic to the notion that parishioners could find the notion shocking -- again, part of standard doctrine -- that baby Jesus came out of a vagina, but "at what stage does attempting to maintain "good taste" in church cross over into a problematic denial of the earthy, physical realities of life?"
Cris was asking me just the other day -- really! -- about the doctrine of the virgin birth and whether I believe it. Do I believe Mary was not impregnated by a man? Not really -- but I also don't really care. What I do find much more compelling and more central to my faith is the point that the old priest was trying to get at: Jesus' birth was human, bloody, like other births; Jesus came out of a real woman's vagina.
Chances are you lend no religious or historical credence to these ideas, but even as a metaphor or symbol, the notion that of a real, human birth is more compelling than that of a "virgin birth."
Back now to the 21st century: Religious right-winger Ralph Reed's Senate campaign is in big trouble because of his well-documented ties to Jack Abramoff. On Friday the AP reported that 21 of Georgia's 34 GOP state senators urged him to withdraw from the primary. Reed is one of the main implementers of the GOP's winning strategy of manipulating conservative church-goers into becoming conservative voters; he headed the Christian Coalition. Thank God some people are not so utterly consumed with greed for power that they can ignore Reed's association with the criminal Abramoff.
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