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But she could not be conjugally given to Joseph --- in the full, one-flesh sense --- because she had already been given to God for the exercise of her sexual reproductive capacity. A "good and devout woman" can only give herself to one --- or shall we say, one at a time --- in the conjugal sense unless she is widowed and remarried.

The one big flaw with MDO's argument about Mary is that Mary was already espoused to marry Joseph when the angel made the announcement.

That, in the Jewish custom of the day, WAS a legal marriage, which did entitle Joseph his conjugal rights.

He was considering DIVORCING her, not a term one uses if one is not in a legal marriage.

Therefore, if one is going to go by the conjugal rights angle, The Holy Spirit would have been impregnating a woman whose conjugal rights were already spoken for, thus making, (and I'm sure the RC's will jump all over this one) the Holy Spirit and Mary both adulterers in having some sort of conjugal relationship with an already legally. married woman.

As for Mary, she had a serious reason to abstain with Joseph, because it was God who had a conjugal right to her.

Wrong. since she was already married to Joseph, legally although not yet consumated, it was JOSEPH who had those conjugal rights. Mary was a MARRIED woman when God told her she would bear Jesus. Joseph had every right to take her as a normal wife after the birth of Jesus with normal expectation of a normal sexual relationship with HIS wife.

Calling Mary the spouse of the Holy Spirit when she was legally married to a man, would make both her and the Holy Spirit adulterers, if the conjugal angel were correct.

There could NOT have been a conjugal relationship between Mary, a human being, and the Holy Spirit, diety.

The paradox about Mary's engagement to Joseph, followed by her impregnation by the Holy Spirit, is that, from worldly sense, it could be said that she's cuckolding innocent Joseph. I can't see it that way --- it would be gravely dishonorable --- and it seems the key is that she was not (in the full sense) married to Joseph (their union was not consummated), nor had she ever intended to consummate it.

Therefore she was not violating his exclusive conjugal right.

There is textual support for that understanding, as you know, because there it is at

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3304228/posts?page=56#56

Hannah, Sarah, Samson's mother --- they all assumed that when they got marvelous news that they were going to become pregnant, it meant they would of course get pregnant by their husbands. "Whoa, what??! How am I going to get pregnant? How can this be?" is not a question that occurred to them. It would have been rather bizarre if it had. They had spouses, and they knew where babies come from.

But that was Mary's reaction. The only possible explanations are, either that (1) she did not know that marriage to Joseph meant sexual union and, consequently, an expected pregnancy (she "didn't know where babies come from") or (2) though betrothed to Joseph, she was committed to virginity and expected no pregnancy.

Is there any other explanation for Mary, a young, betrothed woman, being "troubled" and surprised when she was told that she would bear a son?

Mary Ever-Virgin:
the pattern of Covenant fidelity

Metmom: You wrote, ”There could NOT have been a conjugal relationship between Mary, a human being, and the Holy Spirit, deity”

That would be a reasonable assumption for anybody to make, but only if they were not familiar with the Bible.

On the contrary, the expectation and celebration of a nuptial relationship between God and His Beloved is one of the most widespread and multivalent themes of the Bible. It highlights the conjugality of the covenant-bond God has with the land of Israel; the Jewish people; Daughter of Jerusalem; Daughter Zion; between Christ and the Church; between Christ and the soul; directing all of the Bridal canticles (Song of Songs) and Psalms to God as Spouse, and culminating with “the Spirit and the Bride say, Come” (Rev 22:17.)

Consider the importance of covenant and conjugality:

Hosea 2:19-20
I will betroth you to me forever:
I will betroth you to me with justice and with judgment,
with loyalty and with compassion;
I will betroth you to me with fidelity,
and you shall KNOW the Lord.
Isaiah 54:5
For your Maker is your husband--
the LORD Almighty is his name--
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer;
he is called the God of all the earth.

Isaiah 62:5
As a young man marries a young woman,
so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you.

Ezekiel 16:8
"'Later I passed by, and when I looked at you
and saw that you were old enough for love,
I spread the corner of my garment over you
and covered your naked body.
I gave you my solemn oath
and entered into a covenant with you, “
declares the Sovereign LORD,
”and you became mine.”

As a contrast, St. Paul presents the Abraham-Hagar-Sarah situation as an allegory (Galatians 4:24-15), showing the opposition between a base, slavish sexual liaison (with Hagar), and a true, free and faithful covenant (with Sarah.)

What do we learn about God’s character here? We learn that He rejects a reproductive liaison with a borrowed concubine as unworthy of the Covenant, and that He privileges instead Abraham’s union with the free and faithful Sarah, as being the one which will carry the Covenant forward.

All of these are foreshadowings which carry us on to the scene of fulfillment, when God’s own Son will become incarnate in the world.

Does God choose Mary on the on the pattern of Hagar, or on the pattern of Sarah? Is Mary’s offspring to be slave, or free? Is Mary a temporary reproductive “fix,” or is she His Beloved, His Blessed-among-women?

If Mary is seen as having been married to Joseph in every sense of the word, then her being tapped by God was just a temporary reproductive expedient: she is a breeding surrogate (call her Hagar!) , and Joseph is a betrayed claimant, a fall-guy, and a chump. God is founding the Incarnation of His divine Son, not on Covenant, but on concubinage and cuckoldry.

Thus --- if we accept that account --- God resorted to a coarse non-covenantal ploy to bring about the coming of the Messiah of Israel and Redeemer of the World. He treated Mary as a reproductive utiilty. He robbed Joseph, “a just man,” of his conjugal right: “OK, I took her; I got what I wanted; now you can have her.” There is a solid Biblical reason to reject this repellent account of things; and that is, the evidence that Mary and Joseph had never had, nor intended, the exchange of exclusive conjugal rights, each to the other. This evidence is found in Mary’s otherwise inexplicable response to the Angelic Salutation in Luke 1:. When Gabriel brought her the tidings that she was chosen to ”conceive in her womb and bear a son,” Mary, “greatly troubled,” responded, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” This is inexplicable because marvelous tidings of fertility are a repeated theme of Scripture. In every other case, it’s accomplished by natural spousal union. Mary would have known this. When Sarah, Hannah, and Samson’s mother are told they will bear sons, they don’t become “troubled” and say “Whoa. What??! How can this be?” They have no reason to think it will be by any means except their expected relations with their husbands.

If Mary, being betrothed to Joseph, had pledged to him the reciprocal and exclusive conjugal rights which define marriage, there would be no reason for her to think anything other than that she would be like Sarah, Hannah and Samson’s mother: that she would bear a son because of her inevitable future relations with her husband.

So there are only two possibilities: either she was baffled because she didn’t know where babies come from; or she was not expecting conjugal relations with Joseph.

And no, the fact that she was at that time a virgin is not the deciding factor. The Angel Gabriel didn’t say “You have conceived.” He said “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son.” It was left as an event in the undefined future.

This key Biblical fact, “Mary’s Perplexity,” points to the conclusion that she did not have, and did not intend to have, full conjugal relations with Joseph.

This may well strike us as strange, since Judaism had no tradition of consecrated virginity, and every espoused Jewish maiden would fully expect to conceive and bear children through her intended sexual relations with her husband. Nor is there any indication that Mary knew she had been predestined to be the mother of God’s own Son.

However, it’s the only way the evidence can be seen coherently. A dedicated, lasting virginity explains Mary’s Perplexity, and also shields her (and God!) from the repellent alternative: that God intended to found the Incarnation upon a base and temporary relation of concubinage with Mary and marital fraud against Joseph, and not upon the basis of the kind of exclusive and lifelong covenant anticipated by all the prophets.

Mary was ever-Virgin because she was ever-faithful. God had the conjugal right to her: God alone. She was no borrowed breeding-slave like Hagar; she was the new Sarah, the faithful, the free, the mother of the Lord of the Covenant.