The Bible names brothers of Jesus — and you say Mary stayed a virgin?

🔥The question: “If Jesus had brothers like James and Joseph, didn't Mary have other children?”

🛡️The Church's answer: The Church confesses the perpetual virginity of Mary — before she conceived Jesus, in giving birth to him, and ever after. The word translated ‘brother’ in the Bible does not point only to a sibling born of the same parents, the way the English word does today; it can stretch to relatives and to close members of a household. The Gospels never call the men known as the ‘brothers’ of Jesus other children of Mary, and some of them are introduced as the sons of a different Mary.

The purpose of the doctrine is not to make marriage or sexuality dirty. The Church teaches that marriage too is a good God gives, and a sacrament. Mary's virginity reveals a calling all her own — body and heart handed over completely to God's plan of salvation — and the fact that the birth of Jesus is a gift God himself began.

🧐If they press further: “It says ‘firstborn son,’ so doesn't that mean a second one came after?” — in the Bible and in the law of that time, ‘firstborn’ can name the standing of the son who is born first and consecrated to God, whether or not another child came later. That one expression by itself cannot settle whether Mary had other children.

✨In one sentence: “‘Brother’ in the Bible can reach as far as a relative. The Church believes Mary was a virgin all her life, and that her virginity doesn't lower marriage but shows a calling answered to God with everything she had.”