Why isn’t Jesus the blessed virgin man?

Posted on by theageofthediary

Jesus never married, and if he followed the Catholic belief that you shouldn’t have sex outside marriage, then he must have been a virgin for life. So why isn’t he the blessed virgin man?

His mother Mary is praised to the heavens for bearing a child and yet she was “pure” because she was a virgin. Poor Joseph, and poor Mary too. Why did she have to stay a virgin just because she was the mother of god? Couldn’t she have enjoyed her human sexuality and still have been completely awesome? No, it’s because virginity is the source of her sainthood. Being the mother of god wasn’t enough, and thus she had to be a virgin forever.

If Jesus was a virgin as well, why is it never talked about? Why isn’t his virginity a source of his grace? Sure, the celibacy of priests is based on his and the disciples’ celibate lifestyle, but besides this, why isn’t there a cult-following that zeroes in on male virginity? Is it because the god title eclipses Jesus’ man-virgin title? Or is it because virginity isn’t as valued in men as it is in women?

Sometimes it is as if virginity only happens in women. Virginity is an issue, a responsibility, something that women have to think about, make a choice about whether they want to be “sluts” or as chaste as the Blessed Virgin Mary. She could be moderately sexually active, but people can only label her with either slut or saint. There is also a double standard when it comes to virginity. Women are shamed for being devirginized while men are more revered if they bang lots of chicks.

Her power is not increased if she remains a virgin, but she loses power if she ever lets go of it. She is warned that if she has sex, she’ll feel hollow, or men will tell others that she is an easy girl. Losing one’s virginity has to be some kind of life changing choice, but for guys, they can just have fun and have sex. Why isn’t this the same for women?

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6 thoughts on “Why isn’t Jesus the blessed virgin man?”

  1. The allegation that Mary bore children after Christ is a Protestant belief (they cite “brethren of the Lord” passage, brethren have a wide semantic range in bible). Catholicism is a religion based on witnesses of tradition and scripture (actually these too, are witness accounts). We (I’m assuming you’re Catholic) base the perpetual virginity of Mary to the Protoevangelium of James. So it didn’t just popped out or something like what most non-Catholics would like to believe. Now, if Jesus was virgin, why was it never talked about? It doesn’t relate to his ministry (pero siguro kung Pinoy sya malamang inintriga natin siya about not having a wife!), while Mary, who was not involved in propagating his Son’s work, she was a symbol. So it was her character and life story that was used by the early Church fathers to direct people to her Son. I don’t think her virginity was used to teach people to remain virgins or anything like that. There’s a reason why the Catholics never lost grounds even in the darkest epochs of Europe, people kept propagating, biologically ahahaha, and I think church leaders gave them their blessings 🙂

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    1. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I have several questions though about your response: Why was it necessary for Mary to stay a virgin to become a “symbol”? A symbol of what? So if she wasn’t a virgin, she wouldn’t have been an inspiring symbol? Is it because people believe that women who are virgins are more respectable than women who are not? Why do we think this way? Why isn’t this applied to men? Why was her virginity necessary for her character and life story to be used by the early Church to direct people to her son? Why wasn’t virginity an important aspect of Jesus’ ministry but is important for Mary’s symbolic role?

      After Jesus died, Mary did help out to spread the word of god, and who knows even when Jesus was still alive, so there could have been other issues she was involved in, but what we know most about her is that she is a virgin. Why are we fixated on Mary’s virginity? Why have we reduced her to her virginity?

      Lastly, I disagree that Mary isn’t used to teach people to remain virgins. In my experience studying in an all-girls Catholic school we were taught to not have pre-marital sex, and religion teachers often point to Mary as a model for us to emulate, but come to think of it, Mary didn’t just save herself until marriage, she saved herself until forever (that is assuming that we accept the Catholic beliefs that she remained a virgin for all time).

      Mary’s virginity is a symbol, a symbol of chastity, and there’s nothing wrong with being chaste. If a woman feels that she is not ready to have sex or she’d rather be celibate, then I respect her choice. But if she wants to have sex, before marriage even, with multiple partners (as long as she practices safe sex, and that having sex is not emotionally destructive for her because she does it to have fun, and she’s not a broken woman who is using sex to fill an emotional void, but is simply a woman who believes that she wants to live free and have fun), then I support that too.

      What I question is the double standard when it comes to men and women. For men, they can have sex, and it never diminishes them. For women, there is shame, there is an assumed loss of dignity. No matter what the context of sex is, except maybe in the context of marriage, many people will see her in a negative way.

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  2. Ja, you really present some deep topics but most all are interesting.

    Personally, I don’t think that Mary remained a Virgin the remainder of her life after Jesus was born. Up to that point, she fulfilled the Will of God, as she was chosen. In the Holy Bible in Matthew 13: 55-57, this reading tells us that Jesus had 4 brothers and more than one sister.

    When Jesus walked the shores of the Blue Galilee, there wasn’t a Catholic doctrine but only the Old Testament of the Bible, known as The Law. Jesus didn’t come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it, as it was written many years in advance that Jesus would be born. Since the time of Moses and the Ten Commandments, “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” has been a rule of thumb to live by.

    Churches and even some countries have different meanings for Adultery. Basically, it is defined as having sexual relations with anyone other than your legal spouse. Under the Old Testament, is was a stoning offense but Jesus said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Powerful message, as not one person cast a stone.

    I worked over 37 years in America and China and I had many colleagues. A number of my male colleagues bragged about their extra-marital affairs but I never once heard a female colleague brag about hers. I guess it is a macho thing! However, if we believe in statistics, and I do to a certain extent, more than 60% of men and 40% of women had an extra-martial affair(s) in the USA. Never seen stats from the Philippines on that topic, which is a much more conservative country.

    However, I agree that even in 2013, there is a double standard among the genders and men seem to be more accepted having many women and even children by all these different women. Women are not accepted as well, if at all, as having many different men and many children by all these different men.

    ~ Gary ~

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    1. I also heard about that interpretation that Jesus had siblings, but my religion teacher argued that the Hebrew word for cousins and siblings are similar, so Jesus’ “siblings” could have been his cousins. Well, anyway, no matter if Mary truly stayed a virgin or not, her image as virgin mother still influences women up to this day. When it comes to adultery, yes it is shocking that men can brag about their affairs, but women never do. This is the same with sexual conquests. There is indeed a double standard when it comes to sexual conduct and permissibility.

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  3. Hey, this is Allan from the ADS (the upper batch one). Here’s a perspective from Pope Benedict that he wrote in “Introduction to Christianity”:

    “The virgin birth is not a lesson in asceticism, nor does it belong directly to the doctrine of Jesus’ Sonship; it is first and last a theology of grace, a proclamation of how salvation comes to us: in the simplicity of acceptance, as the voluntary gift of the love that redeems the world.” Although obviously the masculine dominance interpretation is valid too.

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1756704/posts

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    1. Hey Allan! Thanks for sharing that info. That’s an interesting perspective, but I don’t really understand how the lesson on the simplicity of acceptance had to be told within the context of virginity. Wasn’t there any other way that the lesson could have been imparted without Mary being celebrated as a virgin and all? Even if people got that part of the lesson, people still see Mary’s virginity as a model for chastity, so I guess Mary’s influence on emphasizing female virginity is still pretty potent. But thank you again for sharing another perspective!

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