The Babylon Bee, a “conservative” satire website, recently published an article ridiculing the chastity of the Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph. The post was titled “‘You’re Gonna Be A Perpetual WHAT?’ Joseph Asks Mary On Wedding Night.” The “satirical” post – which could well have passed as an invention of Dan Brown or Charlie Hebdo – derisively belittles the sacred person of Saint Joseph by relating an “extra-biblical” text, stating that Saint Joseph was “let down” after learning that Mary was to remain a Perpetual Virgin on their wedding night. The opening text reads as follows:
“NAZARETH — Recently unveiled manuscripts which seem to be a commentary on the Gospel of Luke revealed that Joseph the carpenter was in for a huge shock on the night of his wedding to a hometown girl named Mary.
“According to the commentary, written in Koine Greek, the relationship between the two had been ‘a little odd’ after Mary turned out to be pregnant with the Son of God before her marriage to Joseph. The oddness hit a new high, however, after Mary informed her new husband of her call to perpetual virginity on their wedding night.”
(Source: BabylonBee .com)
The “satirical” piece goes on to imply Saint Joseph’s impatient desire for conjugal pleasures in not-so-veiled terms. The text then has Saint Joseph asking Mary to ask Saint Gabriel to allow a compromise to her virginity, and then weeps “bitterly” after his request is apparently denied.
This mockery of the chaste union of Mary and Joseph is not only incomparably vile, but contradicts Tradition and the Church Fathers, who extol the loving respect Saint Joseph had for the Mother of God’s virginity. Here are some of the edifying things the Fathers have said about Saint Joseph:
- “You say that Mary did not continue a virgin: I claim still more, that Joseph himself on account of Mary was a virgin , so that from a virgin wedlock a virgin son was born. For if as a holy man he does not come under the imputation of fornication, and it is nowhere written that he had another wife, but was the guardian of Mary whom he was supposed to have to wife rather than her husband, the conclusion is that he who was thought worthy to be called father of the Lord, remained a virgin.”
(Saint Jerome; source: www.newadvent.org/fathers/3007.htm; our emphasis) - The same saint states that, after seeing the miraculous wonders of Christ’s birth, Saint Joseph could not dare to compromise the Blessed Virgin, whom Jerome calls “the temple of God, the abode of the Holy Ghost, the mother of his Lord.” Further, Jerome says, “You cannot for shame say Joseph did not know of them [the marvel’s of Christ], for Luke tells us, Luke 2:33 ‘His father and mother were marvelling at the things which were spoken concerning Him.’ “
(Saint Jerome; source, www.newadvent.org/fathers/3007.htm) - “Ambrose says that ‘Joseph, a just man, would not have spread this folly that he had [carnal] relations with the Mother of the Lord.’ “
(Source: OSJUsa.org/st-joseph/church-fathers/chapter-ii/; translation of la.wikisource.org/wiki/De_institutione_virginis) - Saint Augustine affirms: “We should allow that his [Saint Joseph’s] greater purity confirms his fatherhood, or we might find ourselves rebuked by Saint Mary herself. She refused to put her own name before her husband’s, but said, Your father and I have been very worried looking for you (Lk 2:48). So these wrong-headed fault-finders shouldn’t do what his chaste wife never did. So let us count the generations through Joseph, because just as he is a husband in a chaste way, so too he is a father in a chaste way.”
(Saint Augustine; source: The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Part III, Sermons Volume III (51-94), on The New Testament. Part 30, pages 39-40, New City Press, 1990; our emphasis)
The Babylon Bee should be ashamed that it is jumping on the bandwagon of blasphemy, taking part in the modern trend of deriding sacred matters. This assault joins the recent irreligious attack of the blasphemous Olympic performance, and Charlie Hebdo’s latest attack against the Virgin Mary. God, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints are not “open game” for ridicule, least of all for blasphemous and impure insinuations.
Please sign our petition to the Babylon Bee, demanding that it remove this offensive and blasphemous article and apologize.
Petition updated August 26, 2024