You asked a fair, legitimate question and you’ve obviously done your homework, so I’ll take a shot.
There are a lot of arguments folks can make in favor of the doctrine and probably none of them really get at the heart of what you are asking: WHY is it so important? Why MUST she have been perpetually a virgin?
Well, perhaps she mustn’t have after all.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it is most fitting that Our Lady was ever-virgin, but that is only my human sensibilities talking. Perhaps God could have arranged it some other way. I don’t know. I would not presume to limit Him in that way. So I think the theoretical arguments are useful only to a point.
In the end, we do not defend Mary’s ever-virginity because we think it must be theoretically true. We defend it because we believe it is historically true—that it is part of the deposit of the faith that was passed down through the Apostles to the early Church to us.
So I would ask you to strip away all the theorizing on both sides and just consider it as a historical question. Let’s suppose Mary was ever virgin as a fact. And suppose the Apostles knew that, and suppose they passed that fact down to us. It wouldn’t be quite as important *why* God chose to do it that way—we would just accept that like we accept the Resurrection or the miracles or anything else.
Finally! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! That is exactly what I was searching for.
Your post helped greatly in my understanding of why.