Clyde Lewis asked an interesting and thought provoking question on his radio program, Ground Zero, last night.
By now you may have heard about the nun who gave birth. She was rushed to the hospital with stomach pains, and a bit later was giving birth to a boy that she named Francis.. The nun, who has not been named in any media, plans on keeping the child. All involved with the story seem shocked that she had a child..
Named Francis.
While many have laughed and scoffed at the notion that a woman would not know she was pregnant, consider this, as Clyde Lewis spoke about last night: In recent years, there have been at least 45 self-reported sexless pregnancies. The HUFFINGTON POST, however, does mention that there are pitfalls in ‘self reported’ information.. Can these virgin birth reports truly be trusted when people, themselves, are claiming them?
While the reports may indicate shame or the result of an ultra religious background, it highlights the possibilities of Parthenogenesis–a medical term for asexual reproduction. There have been no valid claims of human beings experiencing asexual reproduction, as a matter of fact, a study proved a South Korean woman claiming it to have been a fraud in 2007.
But what Clyde Lewis was trying to illustrate, more than anything, is the fierce backlash that this nun has experienced online in comparison to Jesus Christ. After all, religious people have been the first to line up and call the nun a whore, slut, and any other derogatory term to describe women who aren’t chaste. But at the same time, those Christians would line up at Sunday mass each week and worship the notion that Mary had a virgin birth that led the world have a savior, Jesus Christ.
Maybe Mary was the true first and last human who experienced parthenogenesis? Or maybe something was lost in translation and ‘virgin’ was really maiden. Christian Doctrine even says that Mary was the perpetual virgin, remaining one even after having Jesus (and probably other children, too) .. The feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary is not about Jesus, but about Mary’s own mother. Christian belief holds the notion that Mary’s mother’s womb was clean of original sin, thus allowing Mary to be born a perpetual virgin and never having to have ‘relations with a man’ to conceive. While there may be other religions besides Catholicism that hold some sort of belief on Mary, the main title given to her is Virgin. It relates to long held beliefs that sex was unclean and that women should not enjoy it..
Fast forward to now.. a nun claiming a virgin birth–perhaps a miracle–and naming the child Francis after the Pope. How strange.. how weird. How miraculous?
The first thing I thought of when I heard the story of the nun was the movie with Demi Moore the SEVENTH SIGN. It didn’t take long for me to also recall that a famed horror movie icon, Freddy Krueger, was born from a nun.. In the story of Fred, Amanda Krueger, his mom, devoted her to life to God as a nun.. Also Robert Englund played Freddy in NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5, which was named the Dream Child.
We celebrate miracles from bible times. We still hold up traditions from 2000 years ago. We worship Jesus without hard evidence, but ignore Horus. And many still have a concept that Mary did not have sex to get impregnated. But we condemn a nun who claims the same…
I have a Christian friend who literally believes the Bible–yes, she even believes that the earth is 6,000 or so years old and that dinosaurs never lived after the great Noah flood. I asked her about Mary’s virginity.. I told her my theory, that the only way in my head a virgin birth made sense, was if an alien impregnated Mary with artificial sperm. And that Jesus was an alien. I even spiced it up and said that the great flood happened on Mars and Noah flew a space ship to earth. She paused at that one. And then scoffed.
It comes down to faith. I have faith. I believe God is a combination of math, electricity, and energy.
As far as a virgin birth? I believe anything can be possible but perhaps not probable.
But condemning a nun for claiming it but worshiping a woman from ages ago for being credited with it? That part is where I find people to get a little.. well.. hypocritical.
