The tradition of the Church from the earliest times is that Mary is the Blessed Virgin. In the third century, after the persecutions ended and they lost an external enemy, Christians started fighting with one another about the meaning of the faith. The perpetual virginity of Mary was one such fight because of passages in the Bible that suggested otherwise. “Is Jesus not the carpenter, the son of Mary,and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” Several explanations have been postulated for this — Jesus’ siblings were from a previous marriage of Joseph? The word brother and sister used here should be taken to mean relatives in a more generic sense? One lesson: there are many streams of tradition that enrich our understanding of Jesus. Each of the four evangelists, St. Paul, other Biblical authors each bring how they have encountered Jesus. Our faith in the Christ is fuller because we can call on these various traditions to give us a bigger picture.
