I agree that they currently have that right. I'm suggesting they should forgo the right to discriminate.
Now who's playing "silly word games"? You "suggest that they forgo" it? Okay. I wasn't aware that this thread was a suggestion, but now that you've made it clear that it is: Thanks for your suggestion. The answer is no.
Why should a woman be excluded from a clerical office?
Are they intrinsically incapable of doing the job?
According to the theologies of some of the particular churches which maintain this prohibition,
yes. The RCC, if I recall correctly, teaches that the priest acts "In personae Christi" (if I've got my Latin right, "In the person of Christ"), and since Christ was incarnate as a man, not a woman, then it is not appropriate that women should act in that role. It is, in at least some way, denying the reality of the incarnation to act otherwise. It would be akin to changing any other settled fact of Christian history, and we are to respect God's prerogatives as God, and not change them according to what we'd like or what would look better to someone who isn't even involved in that particular church in the first place (e.g., Catholics don't set the rules for Methodists, Orthodox don't set the rules for Catholics, etc., not that this is even really a "church v. church" thing to begin with; you can see this going back to long before any schism by looking at the canons of Nicaea in 325 AD, which appeal to preexisting privileges and traditions with regard to the sees of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, that each should operate according to the rights and autonomy given to them within their own canonical territories).
Of course, those who do ordain women look at things in a different way, but in neither case is anyone commenting on any inherent deficiency in women. There are examples of women in places of leadership and teaching in the Bible, and also in extra-Biblical literature that forms part of the received Christian traditions in given places, and of course people will argue over how to interpret those examples according to whichever stance their own church has taken on that issue,
generally without making it into an argument regarding women's
competency, since people on all sides recognize that being a priest is not like a secular job where it would be appropriate and probably mandatory to do away with any such prohibition.
A church that discriminates against women as pastors/priest etc. should be subject to the same sanctions as any other employer who discriminates against women employees.
Take it the editorial pages of your local feminist magazine, then. Maybe this sort of thing passes for a serious objection in Upside Down Land, but most Western countries recognize that not treating religious institutions as though they are secular is
part of the separation of Church and State, not a violation of it. In the US, this is explicitly stated in our founding document, in the establishment clause of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
You need to explain what possible, rational reason there is for discriminating based on gender?
Will that be before or after you explain why it is rational to abolish the foundation of the modern secular state (the separation of Church and State) so that women can hold a particular job?
