In 1543 Helen Stark’s murder was recorded by John Fox. It is a whisper in history of one of the many travesties committed by the Catholic Church. Stark was accused of not having accustomed herself to pray to the Virgin Mary while she was in labor. On this accusation, she was found guilty and sentenced to death. The woman, along with her sucking infant, was to be put into a sack and drowned.

In a.d. 553, at the Council of Constantinople, the following decree was written: “If anyone will not confess that the Word of God … came down from the heavens and was made flesh of the holy and glorious Mary, mother of God and ever-virgin, and was born from her, let him be anathema.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines anathema as: “a ban or curse solemnly pronounced by ecclesiastical authority and accompanied by excommunication.” The historical Catholic definition, embodied in examples such as Helen Stark, would be more accurately defined as an officially pronounced excommunication followed by torture and execution. For hundreds of years, if a person would not profess the perpetual virginity of Mary they would be introduced to the Catholic version of anathema.

The doctrine that Mary was a perpetual virgin is one of Catholicism’s most avidly defended doctrines. On it the church builds its doctrines of Immaculate Conception, Assumption, Mother of God and Queen of Heaven. Together these doctrines deify Mary and make her veneration central to the Catholic religion. Moreover, they claim that without Mary’s perpetual virginity being true, she could not have obtained her present status as a chief deity.

Catholics believe that chastity is a promise of immortality (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Article 2347) and is to be practiced even within marriage. This belief casts shame on the lawful practice of sex within marriage. It is responsible for countless unhappy homes and shattered marital relationships. Satan is the real author of this teaching. The chief object of Satan’s hatred is the God Family; it pleases Satan to spawn the belief that there is shame in sex within marriage since the sex act actually strengthens a marriage and produces more potential members of the God Family. (For more, read The Missing Dimension in Sex.)

The Catholic Church teaches that all Christians should believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary, mother of Jesus. So, at risk of being condemned as a heretic, why would anyone claim that Mary was not a perpetual virgin? Simply because it is not the truth!

What is truth? In John 17:17 we read, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” The Bible is the foundation of all truth. If a belief or doctrine cannot be reconciled in the words of the Bible then it must be discarded as false.

The Catholics try to prove their doctrine from two main sources: the works and sermons of early Catholic Church fathers and popes, and by a questionable historical document they regard as authoritative called the Protoevangelium of James.

The first source of their doctrine stems from the minds of men. Catholic teachings use sermons and works of ancient Catholic scholars and popes, most of which lived around a.d. 250 to a.d. 400, in an attempt to add historical weight to their position. None of these arguments are accompanied by biblical facts. They merely state their belief in sophistic language. As an example, Pope Siricius i writes, “You had good reason to be horrified at the thought that another birth might issue from the same virginal womb from which Christ was born according to the flesh. For the Lord Jesus would never have chosen to be born of a virgin if he had ever judged that she would be so incontinent as to contaminate with the seed of human intercourse the birthplace of the Lord’s body, that court of the eternal king” (letter to Bishop Anysius, a.d. 392). Since they simply state their belief or, at best, use only human reason to prove their belief, we can discard them without any further consideration.

The second and main source of Catholic dogma, the Protoevangelium of James, is claimed to have been authored around a.d.120, though the real date of its authorship cannot be known. It claims to record a great deal of history regarding Mary and Joseph before the Bible Gospel accounts pick it up. None of what is written in the Protoevangelium can be verified from the Bible; the Bible actually contradicts it in many of its passages.

The Catholic Church, obtaining its doctrine from essentially its own writings, has come up against a problem, especially in the last few hundred years. As the Bible became widely translated into various languages and more people became literate, many began to see that the Bible contradicted this doctrine, and Catholics began to lose the power they had to kill all who opposed them. They then took on the challenge of reconciling biblical references to Christ’s brothers in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3 with an innacurate understanding of the meaning of the word brother.

In Matthew 13, Jesus was teaching in the temple. When He finished, the people said of Him, ” Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?” (verse 55). Mark records this event as well: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? …” (Mark 6:3). The context alone provides plain evidence that Christ had actual blood brothers and sisters. The Catholic Church, however, denies the context.

The Catechism—the official summary of Catholic religious doctrine (Article 500)—states that these brothers are actually cousins or another type of close relative born of another Mary and not the “Virgin Mary.” Catholicism reasons this since in the Hebrew language the same word used for brother was used for cousin. However, the New Testament was not written in Hebrew; it was written in Greek. Other arguments are that the “brothers” in these passages were stepbrothers (making them children of Joseph from a previous marriage), that they were His cousins, or that this word just meant that they were of the “brotherhood of Jesus,” much like a fraternity.

In the Greek text, the word “brother” is adelphos, which literally means “from the womb,” indicating these are Christ’s brothers from His mother. The same word is used for “brother” in Mark 6:3. Adelphos literally means “the male child of the same mother.” Had Matthew or Mark meant to say they were of the same brotherhood they would have used the word adelophotes, not adelphos. Adelophotes specifically means brotherhood. Had they meant cousins they would have used the Greek word for cousins, suggenes.

From these verses, we gather that Jesus had at least four brothers and some sisters from Mary, his mother! Mary was not a perpetual virgin.

With the meaning contained in one word of the Holy Bible, written down and confirmed by two different apostles, we destroy the Catholic doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity and pull down yet another idol that has served to deceive and depredate the lives of millions.