As I have argued on these forums many times, the reason to ordain women is that women share in the human nature Christ assumed. To claim that they can’t act “in persona Christi” seems to deny this, which would mean that they shouldn’t be baptized and cannot be saved (or don’t need to be saved, or are saved by some means other than the Incarnation of the Logos in Jesus of Nazareth). All of these are heretical conclusions. Hence, the logic of orthodoxy actually seems to require women’s ordination.
The argument that Jesus only chose twelve men is a poor one, because there is nothing in the NT to indicate that he intended the maleness of the Twelve to be paradigmatic. The Twelve were also all Jews, but we all agree that Gentiles may be ordained. There is no record that any of them were slaves, and it’s extremely unlikely that any of them had blond hair.
Contrary to what a lot of Catholics claim, there are very plausible cultural reasons why Jesus would have chosen twelve men. This doesn’t “limit” Jesus except in the sense in which the Incarnation is a self-limiting. Obviously Jesus could disregard cultural norms when he chose (though even then he wasn’t disregarding them so much as violating them in ways that themselves made sense within his culture). And obviously he didn’t choose in this particular case. Possibly because the symbolism of the twelve sons of Jacob was important. At any rate, all we can deduce from this is that he wasn’t what we would call a feminist. Which may be shocking to some folks, but probably not to most on this forum. Jesus also did not directly challenge slavery, so the idea that he was a radical social reformer concerned with the things we think social reformers ought to be concerned with, and that any failure to act in accordance with 21st-century social norms must be explained, just doesn’t make sense.
The argument about pagan priestesses is also a poor one. While I do not deny that there is a sacerdotal aspect to the Christian episcopate and presbyterate, neither of these terms, nor the term “apostolos,” is simply equivalent to “hiereus” or the Latin “sacerdos.” Pagan priestesses had strictly ritual functions. Christian presbyters and bishops, as well as presiding at the Eucharist, were community leaders. The heretical communities that did ordain women were either Gnostic (arguing that the body didn’t matter) or Montanist (arguing that only the inspiration of the Spirit gave authority). The idea of a hierarchical authority structure requiring great qualities of reason and virtue in its members including women was, in fact, culturally unthinkable, and neither pagan priestesses nor heretical Christian communities ordaining women function as counter-examples to this.
Women were not ordained for centuries because women were thought to be inferior versions of humanity. That did not mean that women were not human or could no be saved, or could not be holy. But femininity was, in itself, seen as defective. This is well-documented from throughout the patristic, medieval, and early modern periods. Aquinas is the most obvious example, but it isn’t just Aquinas. Chrysostom said, “no women, and few men, should be ordained,” because to be ordained meant that one had to be fully possessed of rational faculties. This would have been obvious to most people. If you ask, “why didn’t Jesus challenge this ‘sexism’?” you have to ask also, “why didn’t Jesus challenge slavery?” And if you answer, “Jesus planted seeds that would lead people to reject slavery,” well, the same applies here.
