Msg Base:  AREA 5  - ASK FATHER            CIN ECHO   AMDG
  Msg No: 148.  Fri 10-04-91 16:35
    From: Father Mateo
      To: Dan Tudor
 Subject: Perpetual Virginity

³     Could you lend a hand to a struggling Catholic (that is to say,
³ struggling with some of the people I converse with on local echoes)?
³ Could you direct me to some source information on the doctrine of the
³ Perpetual Virginity of Mary?  I had a request from one of my non-Catholic
³ brothers for information and my resources are limited.  The only works I
³ have that address the question at all are Richard McBrien's "Catholicism",
³  Keating's "Romanism vs Fundamentalism", and a Patristic collection calKeati
³ called "Faith of the Early Fathers".  Any help would be appreciated.
 
Dear Dan,
 
Please call down these messages from our Ask Father conference:
1) 26th August, 1991 (to Jeremiah McAuliffe)--write for these
catalogs and check for books, pamphlets, tapes on your subject;
2) 15th August, 1991 to Dan Pacheco;
3) Father Mateo's OUR LADY'S LIFELONG VIRGINITY (MATEO.ZIP in USERS
directory).
 
Two excellent PROTESTANT defenses of Mary's perpetual virginity are:
1) John de Satge.  Down to Earth.  (Consortium Books, 1976.  ISBN
0-8434-0607-0); 2) Max Thurian.  Mary Mother of all Christians
(Herder and Herder).  --N.B.  Thurian is out of print but worth
searching for.  He shows that Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and other early
Reformation figures accepted Mary's perpetual virginity.
 
Albert J. Nevins' "Answering a Fundamentalist" (Our Sunday Visitor
Press, 1990.  ISBN 0-87973-433-7) is very good on Our Lady.  Keating
you already have:  everybody and his fundamentalist brother attack
Keating, which makes us think that he REALLY bothers them.
 
Orthodox people believe in Mary's perpetual virginity.  Check the
books written by Kallistos Ware.
 
This is a popular topic and a perpetual irritant to some people.  Why
it should be, I don't know.  All our Protestant objectors accept the
Virgin Birth of Jesus, yet they reject the lifelong virginity of His
Mother.  But the former required an astounding miracle, whereas the
latter required none.
 
                                    Sincerely in Christ,
                                    Father Mateo