What is the price one pays when one suggests that sex is a necessary precursor to having a baby? Death threats! What follows is apparently deserving of the death sentence, according to the NYPost:
“I think Mary was in love with Joseph and that they were a normal couple – and having sex is a normal thing,” Caram told the Chester in Love Show, according to the Guardian. “It’s hard to believe and hard to take in. We’ve ended up with the rules we’ve invented without getting to the true message.”
According to the article, these sort of free-thinking questions also require an apology or, at least, that is what Sister Caram felt compelled to do.
The take-away: It is apparently the safer practice to proclaim that Mary got pregnant without having sex.
There was a surge of new religions being founded in the Eastern Mediterranean beginning about 50 BCE and continuing for sixty to eighty years. Each one featured a virgin birth. The most famous was Mithras. When Christianity came along, it didn’t want to be the only kid on the block without a virgin birth, thus the myth of the virgin Mary.
I see no reason to believe in a virgin birth for one to be a Christian. Most of the stuff is hardly fundamental to belief.