Do the canons of the Second Council of Constantinople anathematise those who believe that Mary and Joseph consummated their marriage?

## Motivation I have difficulty, personally, believing in the **perpetual virginity of Mary**. I do not begrudge anyone else believing that doctrine; I cannot imagine that it affects a person's salvation either way. But, to the best of my understanding, a straightforward reading of Matthew 1.25 rules it out: >but knew her not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus. On the other hand, I do respect the authority, indeed the infallibility, of the Ecumenical Councils. I was a bit shocked, then, to read today that the Fifth Ecumenical Council, alias the **Second Council of Constantinople**, made belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary mandatory for anyone calling himself a Christian. I would be grateful, therefore, for any help in resolving my consequent cognitive dissonance. *I would prefer, however, for any given answer to this question to focus on the interpretation of the canons of Second Council of Constantinople, and not my reading (or misreading) of scripture. Matthew 1.25 has been discussed many times elsewhere; the Second Council of Constantinople has not.* ## The Second Council of Constantinople According to this translation , Canon 2 of the Fifth Ecumenical council states: >If anyone shall not call in a true acceptation, but only in a false acceptation, the holy, glorious, and ever-virgin Mary, the Mother of God, or shall call her so only in a relative sense, believing that she bare only a simple man and that God the word was not incarnate of her, but that the incarnation of God the Word resulted only from the fact that he united himself to that man who was born; if he shall calumniate the Holy Synod of Chalcedon as though it had asserted the Virgin to be Mother of God according to the impious sense of Theodore; or if anyone shall call her the mother of a man or the Mother of Christ, as if Christ were not God, and shall not confess that she is exactly and truly the Mother of God, because that God the Word who before all ages was begotten of the Father was in these last days made flesh and born of her, and if anyone shall not confess that in this sense the holy Synod of Chalcedon acknowledged her to be the Mother of God: let him be anathema. After a bit of reflection, I think I understand from this: 1. The bishops who drew up this canon believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary. 1. The canon anathematises those who fail to acknowledge Mary as **Mother of God** but it does not anathematise, explicitly at least, anyone failing to acknowledge Mary as Ever-Virgin. Canon 2, on the other hand, does seem to come a bit closer to an explicit anathematisation of those denying Mary the title of Ever-Virgin: >If anyone shall not confess that the Word of God has two nativities, the one from all eternity of the Father, without time and without body; the other in these last days, coming down from heaven and being made flesh of the holy and glorious Mary, Mother of God and always a virgin, and born of her: let him be anathema. But, again, the anathema, at least to my mind, seems to be aimed at a Christological heresy rather than a Mariological one, at whether, through Mary, God was born of a woman, rather than at whether the Mother of God ever slept with her husband. Although it is also clear that the bishops present at the council did believe in Mary's perpetual virginity. (Mary is also called Ever-Virgin in several other canons, but I do not have anything to say about those canons which I have not said already.) ## Summation I wholeheartedly believe that Mary is the Mother of God in precisely the Christological sense outlined in the canons of the Second Council of Constantinople. Therefore, it seems that, despite not believing in the perpetual virginity of Mary, I am not liable to any of the anathemas (anathemata?) of said canons. But is that just casuistry and/or wishful thinking on my part? (One final thing: it seems that the text of the canons was not preserved in the original Greek, but only in a single Latin manuscript, which was not rediscovered until the 1980s. Does this have any bearing on the authority of the canons in the form in which we have them today?)