A bit of Marian theology. Mary, the mother of our Lord, was espoused to Joseph. They had not yet wed: indeed if they had Mary would not have been a virgin, for Joseph was a righteous man. From Dalrock’s critique of Driscoll trying to get single men in the church to marry — anyone, qualified or not for marriage…

I would just like to point out that when Joseph found out Mary was pregnant, he was all set to divorce her/break the marriage contract, as was perfectly legal for him to do under Hebrew law.

God had to send a freaking angel to get Joseph not to do so

Since they were betrothed, Joseph was obligated to marry Mary unless she disqualified herself (such as by losing her virginity). When the messenger angel Gabriel informed him of the divine nature of her pregnancy, he was – among other things – telling Joseph that he was still under obligation to marry her under their laws and customs. She was not “sullied” – her situation was unique (unlike the single mothers at Mars Hill).

The message was NOT that he should marry her because either she or the child needed a man to ManUp[TM] and assume responsibility for them. Knowing what he knew at first (before Gabriel told him) Joseph was perfectly within his rights to walk away from the betrothal, and fully intended to do so. A man who finds himself in a similar position today is equally free to walk away.

Well, yes. As has been pointed out to me, in many places, the teaching of the church on marriage is now profoundly subversive. It is human, it is reality based, but it is subversive.

Because the Church cannot make us better. Only God Can. And that happens by the spirit of God, not my any regulation. A Catholic Priest describes the conscience, the hound of heaven, and how it chases. And how hard it is to drown that quiet reproof out.

They may have, with some limited success, beaten their consciences into submission, but “with unhurrying chase, and unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, majestic instancy, they beat – and a voice beat, more constant than the feet, ‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me’” to quote Francis Thompson. To keep themselves from hearing the inner voices of their conscience – and verily, the voice of God – they need a ringing chorus of support and “understanding” to help them maintain the illusion that what they are doing is perfectly normal, perfectly, healthy, and a perfectly legitimate choice.

You cannot regulate the work of the spirit. You cannot deny the rules of nature. We are made, as men and women, different: we are all broken by our own evil. This society tries to regulate our very relationships, how we eat, how we interact, even how we court and love. As if all these things are contract, and a rational architecture can somehow make us angels.

But human we are.

For the reformed, Joss Whedon, Mary is not perfect. She is a woman. She erred: at one time she thought the Christ had lost his mind. She raised a family. And she saw her son die in atonement, and saw the risen body. We honour her, not because she is better than us, but because she is like us. She is human.

She is no alien. The idea that we can be perfect is the sin of Lucifer: that we can be like unto God. But we are not. Whedon is a better theologian than he realized, when he indicated that the only correct thing to do with a pagan ideology and coercive worship of tolerance and progress is to be human. And aim to misbehave.