An Argument From Constitution, Not Capacity

The position that ordained priesthood is reserved to men is held, by the churches that teach it, as a claim about the constitution of the ministry itself rather than as any judgment about women's spiritual worth or capacity for leadership. The Roman Catholic Church grounds the position in what it holds to be the unbroken practice of Christ and the apostles, who chose only men among the twelve, and in a sacramental theology in which the priest is understood to act in the person of Christ at the altar in a way the church holds requires a male minister to signify properly. Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches reach the same practical conclusion by a related but distinct route, emphasizing the priest's liturgical role as an icon of Christ within a tradition of unbroken practice they regard themselves as having received rather than devised. Both lines of reasoning present themselves as bound by a received constitution of the ministry that the church does not consider itself free to alter, rather than as a live policy choice weighed afresh against changing social expectations, which is why proponents of the position generally resist being read as making an argument about competence at all, and instead frame it as a question of what the sacrament of order can validly confer.