The last time we heard from Notre Dame professor Candida Moss she was on every television show possible discussing her theory that Christians of old were never actually persecuted and that they only made all that up to inspire people to become Christian.
(Because that makes sense. Hey, become a Christians because we’re always getting tortured and killed! Worst sales pitch evah!)

But the latest from Moss really takes the cake. Moss wrote a piece for HuffPo which was originally bombastically titled “Did the Virgin Mary Ever Have Sex?” I saw it linked on Yahoo. This is the height of clickbait asshattery. Think about it. The week before Christmas and what do we have but an article from a Notre Dame professor about whether the Virgin Mary might have had sex. Now, I understand that many times authors don’t pick their titles. But the entire piece is just so ridiculous and empty.

Of all of the miracles recorded in the New Testament, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ garners the most cynical attention. Upon learning that I teach at the University of Notre Dame, almost every atheist I meet will make a crack about Mary’s sexual history. It’s an interesting phenomenon: People rarely tell me that they think the disciples lied about the Resurrection. But when it comes to the doctrine that Mary conceived the Son of God without having sex , no teaching is as closely protected or as broadly scorned.

So Moss doesn’t question the Virgin Birth or Mary’s virginity but she quotes others who have questioned it and have been harmed.

So it’s all a head fake you see. Moss isn’t herself questioning. But she’ll highlight instances where others may have suffered for questioning it. But you can’t pin it on her because she’s not questioning it. You see, it’s all so delightfully meta and hep.

Now, to be fair, someone made the HuffPo change the title to “Virgin Mary, Career-killer.” But the url is still http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/18/did-the-virgin-mary-actually-have-sex.html

The whole thing is just disrespectful and silly. And to publish something like this the week before Christmas smells to me like someone is desperate to be published at the Huffpo and wants to be seen as not like all those other Christian rubes. No, she’s soooooo meta.

*subhead*Silly.*subhead*