The "War on Christmas" continued over the weekend in a Washington Post op-ed that argued, albeit unsuccessfully, that the Virgin Mary's purity offends rape victims, and therefore should be eschewed by Christians.

Written by Rev. Ruth Everhart, a pastor at Hermon Presbyterian in Maryland, the op-ed expresses disdain towards reverence of the Virgin Mary, saying that her "good girl" image puts an unfair burden on women, especially rape victims.  

She writes,"Church culture tends to be fixated on sexual purity year-round, but during Advent, I’m tempted to blame it on the Virgin Mary. After all, she set an impossibly high bar. Now the rest of us are stuck trying to be both a virgin and a mother at the same time. It does not seem to matter that this is biologically impossible."

Whatever the culture at Hermon Presbyterian, no Christian expects a woman to be "both a virgin and a mother at the same time," which is why the Nativity story centers around God miraculously impregnating Mary outside of natural law.

To Catholics and the Orthodox Church, the very fact Mary was chosen to bear God himself in her womb means she had some special endowment from the divine. It cheapens Christian reverence of the Virgin Mary to see her as merely a "good girl" rather than a genuine reflection on the mystery of her immaculate conception.

Sadly, Everhart talks in the piece about being a rape victim herself, the shame she experienced, and how it shaped her view of purity​. We certainly sympathize with Everhart and her right to her opinion, but she misses the Christian message entirely by thinking purity somehow means "unused, or sparkling white," when the point is that for Christians, none of us is pure and can only be made pure through Christ. Her article contains neither sound theology nor healthy insight on chastity, and seems to serve no purpose but to bash Christianity, particularly its emphasis on the virtue of virginity.