OK, Salon didn’t actually write me here at sASK-aTheologian with their question. But they probably should have. Or maybe the could have simply consulted the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Or Wikipedia.
You see, in a recent article, Salon asks “About that “immaculate conception”: could a virgin birth ever really happen?”
The problem is that the immaculate conception is the dogma that teaches that Mary was conceived without original sin. The doctrine of the virgin birth, that Jesus (not Mary!) was conceived without a natural human father, i.e., without sexual intercourse, is a separate matter.
The article, however, is not really about either of these teachings of the Church. It is merely a catchy, if uninformed, way to introduce a piece on the possibility of parthenogenesis, the possibility of reproduction by cloning. Many species reproduce by cloning themselves. Indeed all species did so before the evolution of sexual reproduction, a major step in evolutionary history since the mixing and matching of DNA achieved by sexual reproduction provides a huge boost to genetic diversity when compared with cloning, wherein such mixing and matching can only ever happen by accident. Genetic diversity is the engine that drives natural selection and so the pace of evolution picked up significantly once sex was on the scene. But even after the evolution of sexual reproduction many animals remain capable of reproducing by cloning. As the article points out, as far as we know, this is not the case for mammals.
In other words, a virgin brith, by a human female is not biologically possible.
Now, because some Catholics are always suspicious (not entirely without reason) of the mainstream media in general, and because of the way this specific article was framed, it may be tempting to take this as a slight. Salon magazine has, we might suspect, run a hit piece on Christianity arguing against a key article of our faith, the virgin birth of Jesus (even while confusing it with a different article of faith).
But, of course, the whole point of the doctrine of the virgin birth is that it is biologically impossible! It would be much more troubling, if not finally destructive, to Christian faith if we were to find that human females can quite naturally bear children without a biological father.
The theological value of the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus is that something beyond us and our natural capacities has entered into the system. Our history of sin and destruction is not a closed system into which nothing new can enter. Rather, God is always greater and can reach into our reality no matter how impossible the situation looks from a merely human or natural point of view.
As we prepare for the Christmas season, perhaps we can take this slip up by the mainstream media as an opportunity to ask ourselves if there are any places in our lives that we’ve believed that God cannot enter into and save us. And we can spend our advent praying for the grace to open up those places to the love that transcends all our natural limitations.
