From Our Readers
Job Interviews
Thank you for publishing the article “Young People Ask . . . How Do I Handle a Job Interview?” (February 8, 1983) After completing secondary school, I made many applications for jobs. One company called me for an interview in which I evidently did not make a good impression. Later I was invited by another company for an interview. This time I remembered your article and studied it thoroughly. I applied the suggestions given with regard to advance planning, being calm, alert, businesslike, polite, honest, and frank. I made a good impression and got the job.
B. O., Nigeria
Using Articles in School
I want to tell you how I have been using your excellent articles. In 1981 I took part in a Science Fair in which I exhibited an item I wrote on smoking, based on the magazines. Since then I have used the magazines so many times in school that I cannot count them all. Any time a subject comes up, inside or outside the classroom, I take one of the magazines to school the next day. The magazine has become so famous in my class that when a subject comes up for research or debate, my classmates ask me about it, and I take material to school for it. Thank you very much.
L. C., Brazil
The Catholic Church and Mary
You have done great damage to the Catholic Church in general and to the Blessed Virgin Mary in particular. (“The Catholic Church—Its View of Sex,” November 8, 1985) You wrote that the “dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary perpetuates the idea that sexual relations are unclean.” This is heresy. The dogma of perpetual virginity perpetuates that Mary and Joseph individually took vows before marriage of chastity, which they both kept forever. Later you say that Jesus had real brothers and sisters in his family. This too is heresy. If Jesus had other brothers and sisters, why, when he was dying on the cross, did he entrust his mother to a friend rather than a relative?
D. H., Wisconsin
Sexual relations between married persons are not unclean. (Hebrews 13:4) It does not damage or degrade Mary at all to state that following the birth of Jesus, she started to have sexual relations with her husband Joseph and had children by him. The Bible does not say that Joseph and Mary kept a vow of chastity forever. “The New American Bible” (a Catholic translation) states at Matthew 1:25 regarding Joseph and Mary: “He had no relations with her at any time before she bore a son, whom he named Jesus.” A footnote in this translation says: “The evangelist emphasizes the virginity of the mother of Jesus from the moment of his conception to his birth. He does not concern himself here with the period that followed the birth of Jesus.”
Regarding Jesus’ having real brothers and sisters, the Bible refers several times to such at Matthew 12:46, 47; 13:55, 56; Mark 6:3; Luke 8:19, 20; John 2:12; 7:3, 5. “The New Catholic Encyclopedia” states that the Greek words used to designate the relationship between Jesus and these relatives have the meaning of full blood brother and sister. Likely the reason why Jesus entrusted his mother to his disciple John instead of to any of his fleshly brothers was that they were not yet believers, and Jesus considered the spiritual relationship more important than the fleshly, as he stated at Matthew 12:46-50.—ED.