Yes, Jesus was an only child. The reason for that and other Catholic Doctrines aboyt Mary can be found in the Bible. By the way, the reference in Isiah about a young woman giving birth was understood to be about a virgin because what young woman would have had sexual intercourse at that time?
Anyway what follows is something published in the magazine "Fidelity".
Protestant Bible believing Christians reject the teaching of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches about the Virgin Mary because they believe the teachings to be not Biblical. I think these traditional teachings are firmly entrenched in the Bible.
The origin of Death We begin with Genesis. At the beginning God made man from the dust and breathed life into him and placed him in a garden in which both the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil existed. Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Gen 2:7-9) Thanks to a temptation from the serpent, the woman, not then named, was tempted to take fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3:5). Notice that he did not tempt her with the tree of life! She succumbed and Adam followed when she offered the fruit. This displeased God who then had to banish Adam and his newly named wife, Eve, because, as the Lord said: "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever -- therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken." – (Gen 3:22-23). So the cost of the acts of Adam and Eve was a denial of ever lasting life, as the Lord also said to Adam; "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, `You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Gen 3:17-19). Thus through the actions of Adam and Eve sin entered the world because they had the knowledge of good and evil that came from eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They could now choose to do good or to do evil. Thus Paul could say: Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned –(Rom 5:12).
So we are all tainted with sin, Original Sin, and have the free will and ability to choose between good and evil.
Demolition of Death This sin, as well as all the other sins we may have committed, is obliterated by baptism. Paul tells us; Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. (Rom 6:3-6). But we all know that even after we are baptized we are weak and succumb to the pull of the body and fall into sin again and again. It is our condition that we can still choose to do good and evil; that choice has not been taken away by baptism. We always have free will. Peter says this to his fellow baptized Christians: Beloved, I beseech you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul (1 Peter 2:11). So every man and woman born is afflicted with the propensity to sin and that propensity is in our flesh and soul and persists even after Baptism because Baptism does not obliterate our free will to choose evil.
The nature of Christ What about Christ? Was He born with this propensity in his flesh? We know He was tempted (Matthew 4:1-11) but never sinned: He committed no sin; no guile was found on his lips. (1 Peter 2:22). And John says: You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin (1 John 3:5). Peter also said: You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. (1 Peter 1:18-19). In Hebrews it says: For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, unstained, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; he did this once for all when he offered up himself. (Hebrews 7:26-27) So it was very plain to the Apostles that Christ was pure and without any sin in him, body and soul. How is all this related to Mary?
The nature of Mary Mary was approached by the Angel - as it says: In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Hail, O favoured one, the Lord is with you!" But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. (Luke 1:26-31). The literal translation of the phrase O favoured one is: you who have been and remain filled with the divine favour. This has been translated traditionally as “full of Grace”, referring to God’s Grace, something that mere mortals in the un-baptized state do not have, because of our Original Sin with which Grace cannot co-exist in a body. And Mary replied giving her permission: And Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her. (Luke 1:38) Our knowledge of this interaction with the angel can have come from only one source, Mary herself. When she was “found with child”, it was inevitable questions were asked. However, she convinced Joseph that an angel had appeared to her and said all those things. He believed her because he was told in a dream that he believed was from God. What would one do who found this was the case? I imagine Joseph would have been struck with awe. We can speculate about what happened but the record tells us no more. Later on in the adult life of Jesus we read of his brothers: All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. Acts 1:14 This reference to brothers leads some to speculate or even maintain that Jesus had siblings whose mother was Mary. For this to have happened Mary would have had to have sexual relations with Joseph; she had no relations with anyone before Joseph. If she did have children as a result of sexual relations with Joseph she would have been no longer a virgin. But then she would have had a lot of trouble explaining Jesus. If there were children running around who were born from Mary while she maintained that the angel announced Jesus and no man was involved she would have had a lot of trouble convincing anyone. Doubt over the virgin birth would have been raised and would have persisted to this day. Joseph himself would have had to have doubts. No, Mary had to be ever virgin. As has been argued elsewhere, the word brother referred to a wide range of relationships and not just to a male from the same womb.
What if Mary was like us? But what about Mary herself? Let us consider for a while if she was like us in all ways, tainted by our Original Sin. When she gave consent to the angel for it to be done unto her “according to your word”, an egg in her fallopian tube was transformed from a haploid state to a diploid state (the DNA doubled) with the extra X chromosome to make the child conceived a male. As a consequence the flesh of Christ came from Mary but if she was like us then the flesh was tainted with the stain of Original Sin. If Mary was stained with Original Sin the flesh of Christ could, therefore, not be without stain, as the evangelists have declared. It might be argued that the egg could have been cleansed before transformation into the body of Christ but that would be the same as us being cleansed as in Baptism and Baptism is no guarantee of being free of sin for the rest of our existence on earth. Christ would not have been completely without spot, as the Evangelists insist.
