Our Lady of Sorrow
Did Mary suffer pain in childbirth?
The ancient belief that Mary delivered the Christ Child without pain, that she was exempted from Eve’s punishment (Gen. 3:16), implies she was free from Eve’s sin. At the same time, it is not impossible to imagine Mary endured labor pains in spite of her sinlessness. Consider the related question of whether or not she underwent natural death, also a part of Adam and Eve’s punishment (Gen. 3:19; Rom. 6:23). Although this matter has not be disclosed to us in divine revelation, and so remains open to debate, the broad consensus among Catholic theologians is that Mary did indeed die, in order to perfectly conform to Her Son (cf. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma [Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1960], p. 208). If Mary had not been spared from death, it follows she may not have been exempted from other forms of suffering for the same reason. The truth of the Immaculate Conception, therefore, does not rest upon the question of Mary’s pain in childbirth.
It is impossible to settle the mystery of the Virgin’s delivery from Scripture alone. Isaiah 66:7 states, “Before she was in labor she gave birth; before her pain came upon her she was delivered of a son.” Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, for one, took this as proof Mary had delivered without travail, writing in about 185 A.D.:
[Isaias] says, "Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and He, being God, is going to be with us” (Isa. 7:14). And whilst, as it were, astonished at this thing, he makes known what will come about, that God will be with us. And concerning His birth, the same prophet says in another place, “Before she who was in labour gave birth, and before the birthpains came on, she was delivered of a male [child]” (Isa. 66:7); [thus] he indicated the unexpected and extraordinary birth from the Virgin (On the Apostolic Preaching 54).
On the other hand, Revelation 12:2 says the Woman “cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.” Along with the Woman in Genesis 3:15, Catholics have traditionally interpreted the Woman in Revelation 12 in the literal sense as Mary. This does not preclude the birth pangs being understood symbolically, however. It has been suggested, in fact, that the pangs represent Mary’s anguish, not from the physical birth of the Savior at Bethlehem, but from the spiritual birth of the Church at Calvary (cf. Pope Pius X, Ad Diem Illum; John 19:26-27).
One of the earliest non-biblical references to Mary’s freedom from pain in childbirth is found in an apocryphal writing called The Protoevangelium of James, which was likely composed around the middle of the second century. Because of this work’s realistic description of the birth of Jesus, emphasizing the corporeal nature of the Incarnation (as opposed to The Ascension of Isaiah, for instance, in which Mary is completely unaware of the delivery), it is thought that The Protoevangelium of James was written to combat gnostic Docetism, which maintained Christ’s body was an illusion (Luigi Gambero, Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999], p. 40). Those who immediately discount the apocryphal writings because they are not inspired texts ought to consider that Saint Jude makes reference to two such works, The Assumption of Moses and First Enoch, in his New Testament letter (see Jude 1:9, 14 ff.). Though useless as sources of theology, the Apocrypha do give witness to religious ideas that were prevalent among Christians in the first centuries. They were often written around orthodox Christian beliefs, in fact, that had not yet been fully defined by the hierarchy. Many beliefs about the Blessed Virgin were incorporated into such accounts—some authentic, some not, some from Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Tradition, some from the minds of heretics. Only the Church, “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15), has the authority to sift out the truth in these writings from among the error (cf. 1 Thess. 5:21). Furthermore, Mary’s freedom from labor pain is verified by early orthodox writers the caliber of Saints Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria. That her painless delivery is mentioned by believers of varied backgrounds, influences, and geography suggests the idea predates the writings; that it was not dreamed up by a later group but taught by the Apostles themselves.