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While Smith is right about the virgin birth, he's wrong about Jesus having brothers and sisters, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. "The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man," says the Catechism. "In fact, Christ's birth did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it. And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the "Ever-virgin."

Smith cites Mark 6:3, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joseph ... and are not his sisters with us?" That seems unanswerable ... until you read the Catechism: "The Church has always understood these passages as not referring to the other children of the Virgin Mary. In fact James and Joseph, 'brothers of Jesus,' are the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom St. Matthew significantly calls 'the other Mary' (Mt. 28:1). They are close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression."

This same mysterious Mary -- neither the Blessed Virgin Mary nor St. Mary Magdalene (the latter with this "other Mary" went to Christ's empty tomb on Easter morning) -- also stood at the foot of the cross: "And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him: among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee's children." (Mt. 27:56, emphasis added).

Maybe it's so important that Jesus not have a few natural brothers and sisters in order that he may have billions of supernatural ones. For the Catechism goes on to say: "Jesus is Mary's only son, but her spiritual motherhood extends to all men whom indeed he came to save: The Son whom she brought forth is he whom God placed as the first-born among many brethren, that is, the faithful in whose generation and formation she cooperates with a mother's love." -- James McCoy

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