I grew up Catholic. I grew up with a manger scenes in the house at Christmas time. I grew up hearing the story of the Annunciation from Luke and the account of Jesus' birth from Matthew, and never questioned it. It's true that my credulity had as much to do with my natural childhood innocence as with any supernatural virtue of faith that I may have had. But even after finding out about the birds and the bees, Jesus' origin story never gave me pause to question.
I was into adulthood before I found out that there are many people who find the Virgin Birth troublesome. Some are total skeptics, but others believe in the Resurrection, in the miracles, and even call Jesus Lord and God. But that Jesus was conceived outside the regular way is a bridge too far. I have to be honest, I don't understand the doubts. The skeptics or the atheists I get. They've drunk a different kind of Kool-Aid, so there's a certain period of intellectual detox that they need to go through before we can even get to discussing something like the Virgin Birth. But that some accept the other mysteries of Jesus' life and reject the Virgin Birth is a total non sequitur to me. I think part of the problem is that many people take the event of Jesus' conception in isolation when it needs to be seen in light of the reason Jesus, the eternal Word of God, took flesh in the womb of the Virgin to begin with.
Everything needs to start with the Paschal Mystery. That Jesus died and rose again is the core of our Faith. It is the reason that 10 of the 11 surviving Apostles suffered martyrdom, and John suffered torture and exile. Countless others suffered the same fate in the first decades and centuries for their refusal to deny that Jesus is risen, like the first 11. No one died, that I know of, for refusing to denounce the Virgin Birth. But whether we're discussing this doctrine, or the veracity of the miracle accounts or the belief in the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, we always have to see these things in light of Jesus' dying and rising. If we believe that Jesus rose from the dead, then other supernatural claims we make about him shouldn't be difficult to accept, or at the very least shouldn't be dismissed as impossible.
The Resurrection is the ultimate validation that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. Whatever other things he did, they were building to that moment when the fullness of the Kingdom was revealed: a Kingdom where illness is unknown, where the power of Satan is banished, where death is defeated. And it is a Kingdom where life is unending. All this is made possible because Jesus, who was sinless, came and stood with sinners, even dying in their place, to make our Redemption possible. Could an ordinary human person have accomplish this? Even one who is blessed by God in a special way? No. Jesus' claims to have existed "before Abraham was," or that he shared in the glory of the Father "before the world began" preclude that Jesus was an ordinary man, or even a special man. This all points to Jesus as a divine person. So if we believe these claims of Jesus, then the idea that he came into the world in an ordinary, natural fashion is harder to believe than the Virgin Birth.
So, I continue to have no problem with the Virgin Birth. I have no problem with it because, from how I see it, it isn't only possible, it is essential when we take all the claims that Jesus and his followers made concerning him. If this was the only extraordinary claim made about Jesus, then the idea that Jesus was miraculously conceived would be a stretch. But taken together it makes perfect sense.
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