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Thursday, March 19, 2015

Josephology Part 1: A Tale of Two Josephs

Don’t forget to attend the vocational retreat!
Good morning, gentle readers. Welcome to a limited series of posts on the bizarre development of Josephite devotion. Once believed to be a crotchety old man certain of having been made a cuckold, he has been popularly transformed into a peer of the Blessed Virgin: sinless, virginal, and assumed bodily to the Throne of God. Many of the causes of this metamorphosis are lost in the fog of history, but it is worthwhile to poke at the evidence left to us, to compare and contrast these two very different Josephs.

His Traddiness has rightly pointed out that Josephite devotion today exists rarely except in the various pre-1969 liturgical communities. That hasn’t stopped Pope Francis from inserting the name of Our Lord’s stepfather into each of the Novus Ordo Eucharistic Prayers with the 2013 decree Paternas vices, but Joseph rarely has a presence in the average Roman Rite parish except as a statue on the side of the church opposite Mary, carpentry tools in hand.

Old Joseph was old. Some legendary works of the early Church place his deathbed age at a Tolkienesque eleventy-one. Certainly not a virgin, he was also a widower and the father of the “brethren of the Lord” who appear at inopportune times in the Gospels. He had decided to quietly divorce Mary out of his belief that she had been engaged in some shady business. He was a sinner like all other men, confessing his faults to Christ and Mary as he passed out of this life.

New Joseph was young. Maria Agreda puts his age at thirty-three when he was betrothed to Mary. This Joseph swore a vow of celibacy, relegating the “brethren of the Lord” to the status of cousins. When he decided to put Mary away quietly, it was because he felt unworthy of being the stepfather of the Messiah. Partaker of the “order of the Hypostatic Union,” he was sanctified in his mother’s womb and made even greater than St. John the Baptist.

The primary text for the few remaining apologists of the New Joseph is the aforementioned The Life and Glories of St. Joseph, written in 1888 by the Anglican-priest-turned-Catholic Edward Healy Thompson, M.A. He apparently spent his Catholic years writing apologetical tracts, hagiographies, and popular devotional works. This poorly researched but long-winded text has been perpetuating the strange ideas of Renaissance-era theologian Francisco Suárez throughout the Anglo-Catholic world for over a century. The book is intended to be a popular text, but has some of the pretensions of academia. It is lightly footnoted, often referencing obscure texts the reader is unlikely to check.

A good example of Thompson’s flawed thinking is his early chapter on the sanctification of Joseph in the womb (Chapter VII). In an attempt to drum up a strong witness of doctrinal authority, he begins by making oblique references to St. Thomas Aquinas’ observation that God gives grace proportional to the office required of a person, then to St. Bernadine’s observation that God elected Joseph to be the guardian of Jesus and Mary. From these rather obvious points, Thompson moves on to obscure theologians who actually say what he wants to hear about Joseph’s prenatal holiness: Bernardine de Bustis, described as a “seraphic” and “most devout doctor... of the 15th century”; Giacomo Lobbezio, a 16th-century Jesuit; Jean Gerson, a scholar for whom the Council of Constance was both his greatest triumph and ultimate downfall; and Isidoro Isolano, a 16th-century Dominican Father who once wrote a devotional book on St. Joseph. From this rather odd theological pedigree, Mgr. Thompson offers the following conclusion:
St. Joseph, then, we see, is always, in the opinion of the Doctors of the Church, held to be, next to the Blessed Virgin, the purest and the most holy among creatures, and worthy, for the sake of the Divine Son and His Mother, to be liberated and purged from original sin immediately after his conception. And this doctrine, professed by great doctors, and tacitly approved by the Church—a doctrine become familiar to preachers in their pulpits, to theologians in their academies, and to sacred writers in their works—may be considered as generally held and believed by devout Christians. (p. 47)
It is hard to think of a conclusion less likely to be drawn from the paltry evidence Thompson delivers, but this is the way he argues throughout the book.

Once, he supposedly quotes St. Athanasius’ De Incarnatione to prove the virginity of both Mary and Joseph (p. 89), but the quote is something this writer at least has never been able to find in the actual text. Frequently he invokes the supposedly “common opinion” of the Doctors of the Church without proving any such commonality. The tone is emotional and inspirational, eschewing the detachment of a true scholarly work (“Joseph was the morning star announcing the aurora which precedes the day,” he says concerning the saint’s birth). Meant to be read by moderately-educated laymen, it’s hard to believe that anyone but the most dedicated reader could make it through all 488 pages.

Mgr. Thompson’s tome might not be worth a more detailed examination, but the older writings and traditions concerning St. Joseph have much to offer. Next time, I will begin a survey of early Christian writing on this saint, especially the supposedly apocryphal works that concern the Nativity and the Holy Family.

Old St. Joseph, pray for us!

18 comments:

  1. I believe the Copts have a long history of devotion to St. Joseph, though I don't know the particulars of it apart from the fact that it's related to the Holy Family's sojourn in Egypt.

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    1. The Coptic Christians venerate a string of sacred sites believed to be places where the Holy Family stopped or passed by. It would make for a great pilgrimage in more peaceful times.

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    2. Indeed they do. There is an excellent icon of an old St. Joseph made by the Coptics.

      https://ecclesialvigilante.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/the-greatest-supporting-actor/

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  2. I hope this series will include reference to St. Joseph in Early Christianity: Devotion and Theology: A Study and an Anthology of Patristic Texts by Joseph Lienhard, SJ.

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    1. Yes. I have that book on my shelf, and expect to reference it occasionally.

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    2. I think it's telling that the book is not even 60 pages in length.

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    3. Lienhard is at least honest enough to admit that the early Church has no support for the newer Josephite doctrines. He tries very hard to find some hints of proto-devotions to St. Joseph, but has almost nothing to work with until the Middle Ages.

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  3. Just a note to say welcome, J, and thanks for this inaugural post under our esteemed host's new format. I very much enjoyed reading it and look forward to future installments! Cheers.

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  4. Pope John Paul II pointed out in 1996 that it is impossible to attribute an Immaculate Conception to St. Joseph. He notes that the 1854 dogmatic definition did not state that that privilege was unique to Mary, and continues:
    "The affirmation of this uniqueness, however, is explicitly stated in the Encyclical Fulgens corona of 1953, where Pope Pius XII speaks of "the very singular privilege which was never granted to another person" (AAS 45 [1953], 580), thus excluding the possibility, maintained by some but without foundation, of attributing this privilege also to St Joseph."

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  5. Pope John XXIII asserted that St. Joseph's assumption into heaven, completing the Holy Family, is a tradition worthy of pious belief. Was St. Joseph "a sinner" as you assert in the post? I don't know, but I think such language is impious and un-traditional. Where in the tradition do we find the sins of St. Joseph delineated? The suggestion that he was at some point after his conception cleansed from original sin - which is disclosed in at least one private revelation that has never been condemned - doesn't scandalize me in the least. Neither does the fact that his cult emerged rather late in the life of the Church. This is true of other saints too, like St. Philomena who was unknown until 1802. Devotion sprung up as the result of miracles associated with these saints and their great intercessory power.

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    1. I don't see any problem with counting Joseph among the sinners while he lived. Saints are not saints because they did not sin, but in spite of their sins.

      There is no man on earth so exact over his duties that he does ever the right and never commits a fault. ~Ecclesiastes 7:20

      for though the just fall seven times, they will rise again; but the wicked are overthrown by calamity - Proverbs 24:16

      Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the LORD delivers him out of them all. - Psalm 34:19

      In fact, I consider it highly disrespectful to the real St. Joseph to reinvent him as a young immaculately conceived virgin assumed into heaven (the devotional tastes of sexually repressed old churchladies notwithstanding). It also diminishes the special status of the Theotokos and brushes the great John the Baptist under the rug.

      If churchladies want a sentimental devotion revolving around an apocryphal rendering of a sacred image into a young effete-looking pretty boy, they already have both the Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart. Leave poor St. Joseph alone!

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    2. LOB, your Freudian interpretation of traditional Catholic piety is beyond odious. And it serves to discredit anything else you might have to say. The "old Joseph" tradition derives exclusively from rejected apocryphal texts and really defies common sense. It seems that the oldest depiction of St. Joseph dates to the 3rd century: Joseph is depicted with the holy family in the Catacomb of Priscilla, and he is young and beardless. With respect to St. Joseph's "sinfulness" or lack thereof, due to his incomparable association with Christ and the Blessed Mother - and to the absence of any reference to his sins in the tradition - the Church seems to have always been careful not to present him as just another sinner turned saint.

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    3. "Traditional Catholic Piety" condemned by Benedict XIV in the case of the Sacred Heart and the Holy Office 4 times in the case of Divine Mercy. Not that people like to talk about it, of course.

      The Catacomb of Priscilla is unclear whether the beardless figure is St. Joseph or Isiah bearing witness. It is therefore not a factor in the discussion of portrayals. On the other hand, the iconography of every single Eastern Church depicts him as quite advanced in age (50-70 for the Byzantines and even older for the Coptics). Also, the label of apocrypha does not indicate that the sources are unreliable. Do we reject them all simply because they are not scripture? How is this not a Protestant way of thinking? Are we to strike Joachim and Anna from our liturgical calendar?

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    4. And you find a beardless Isaiah to be more plausible? Seriously? When cited in ancient texts, Joseph's supposed advanced age is referenced in the context of defending Our Lady's perpetual virginity. Which, apart from non-polemical corroboration elsewhere, seems a little too convenient. You speak about Benedict XIV's criticism of devotion to the Sacred Heart as though the Church had not formally resolved the theological question and approved the devotion. What is your point exactly? There is enough unsettling of settled matters going on elsewhere.

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    5. OK, I shouldn't have been so snippy about the Catacomb of Priscilla image. St. Joseph is not the only contender, though he's my favorite. But I would think it is not a beardless prophet. If not St. Joseph, an angel would make more sense.

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  6. Saint Jerome, on the virginity of Saint Joseph: "But just as we do not deny what is written, we do reject what is not written. That God was born of a virgin we believe because we read it. That Mary consummated marriage after her childbirth we do not believe because we do not read it. Nor do we say this in order to condemn marriage, for virginity is itself a fruit of marriage, but because there is no license to draw rash conclusions about holy men. For if we wish to take the mere possibility into consideration, we can contend that Joseph had several wives because Abraham and Jacob had several wives and that from these wives, the ‘brethren of the Lord’ were born, a fiction which most people invent with not so much pious as presumptuous audacity. You say that Mary did not remain a virgin; even more do I claim that Joseph was virginal through Mary, in order that from a virginal marriage a virginal son might be born. For if the charge of fornication does not fall on this holy man, and if it is not written that he had another wife, and if he was more of a protector than a husband of Mary, whom he was thought to have as his wife, it remains to assert that he who merited to be called the father of the Lord remained virginal with her."

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  7. http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2015/03/st-joseph-in-east.html#.VQ0QnI7F9pt

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