Bishop Tom,
It was really a mind-boggling “leap into outer space” for Joseph to accept something so contrary to the belief of the entire world at that time: that human life could possibly be passed along only by that plenipotentiary “staff of life” of the all-important patriarchal macho.  It was not until the year1827 that science demonstrated that the female has a 50/50% role in producing new functional human life. Before that date the female sexual apparatus was considered as nothing more than a handy natural incubator.  And so, logically, Pope PioNono in 1854 declared the “Immaculate Conception of Mary” as a dogma of faith. She had previously been “defended from the sinful macho-line of descent from Adam” by the dogma of the “Virginal Birth” of Jesus.