Did Mary and Joseph ever have sex?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Catholics explain this away by making the claim that Jesus’ half-siblings were Joseph’s children by his previous wife. This is necessary to maintain the Marian dogma of perpetual virginity.

There is absolutely no scriptural support for this idea, but when has THAT ever stopped Catholics?

Boru

Dredging the memory banks, but didn't that whole notion start with the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin and gather legs from there? For Assumption, Mary had to be "pure". "pure" in this case defined as never having had sex? Does anyone actually know why this might be a virtue?

Of course, this was yes another reason for me to lose faith. In the RCC Mary is close to, if not actually, a co-deity. Just look at the rosary. I will never forget my devout RCC father's attempt to introduce a nightly recitation of the rosary. He gave up due to lack of attendance. I and my siblings always came up with somewhere else we had to be. On those rare occasions where some one of us could not escape, it instantly became a matter of sibling jest. Hahaha, you got caught in the trap.

That said, I will not have a harsh word for the long dead man. I always say out front that he was not a gentleman. He was a gentle man. He needed no religion for that. It was his nature.

It was my priviledge, before he passed, to sit down at a table and confront such matters. I am an atheist and he a devout catholic. We had a heart to heart, a meeting of minds, an acknowledgment of everyone's position on many matters. No faith in imaginary spooks will ever buy that.

One thing sticks in my mind. He considered himself a failure in life. Why? Because he raised four degreed children who all rejected god. He provided for us, funded our life, food, education, health and so on, so we are all happy out in productive employ. But he felt like a failure because we were all atheists.

That is what religion really does to people.

More or less. The four Marian dogmas (that she is the mother of God, that she was immaculately conceived, that she was a perpetual virgin, and that she was bodily Assumed into heaven) basically co-evolved - if you take away one, the rest sort of crumble. If she wasn’t immaculately conceived, she wouldn’t be fit to give birth to God, and if she wasn’t both the mother of God and a virgin,  the Assumption couldn’t have happened.

Boru