From you know where:
Was all set to buy two copies of Susan Swetnam's just-released My Best Teachers Were Saints: What Every Educator Can Learn from the Heroes of the Church for my sisters, both of whom are teachers, when I found this odd bit of speculation via Amazon's "look inside" feature:
As both biblical and apocryphal accounts of Jesus’ birth and childhood verify, though, without Joseph there would have been no New Testament. Without his quiet confidence in dreams, Mary could have been executed with the child in her womb to punish her supposed adultery. Even if Joseph had decided to divorce her “quietly” (Matthew 1:19), she would most likely have perished, homeless, for she could not have resumed her status as a temple virgin or returned to her parents, who, since Mary was a child conceived in old age, would certainly have been dead by that time. Without Joseph’s courage to obey the angel and flee to Egypt, the infant Jesus would not have had food or shelter, a secure home that freed him from anxiety about survival so that he could listen to God’s call.
As popular as St. Joseph is at Chez Leonardi, virtually every sentence above overstates his role by a considerable margin.
