Today CNN published an explanation by Father Stephen Wang, of London's Allen Hall seminary, about why the Catholic Church does not and will not ordain women.
According to Father Wang (easily the most embarrassing name a priest could have at this delicate point in Church history ... but I digress), the problem is that women cannot stand in for Jesus in liturgical and social contexts.
The bottom line is that Jesus chose 12 men - and no women - to be his apostles, Wang argues.
The choice was "deliberate and significant, not just for that first period of history, but for every age," Wang says.
Men and women are equal in Christianity, he continues, but "this does not mean that our sexual identity as men and women is interchangeable. Gender is not just an accident."
He compared the role of a priest to that of an actor playing King Arthur or British soccer star Wayne Rooney in a movie.
"No one would be surprised if I said I wanted a male actor to play the lead," he said, admitting the analogy was "weak."
But, he said, "it shouldn't surprise us if we expect a man to stand 'in the person of Christ' as a priest, to represent Jesus in his humanity - a humanity that is not sexually neutral."
So Father Wang has done us a great service here. At least, he's cleared something up for me. I never understood why, if sex was so darned evil (except when necessary to create new Catholics), God would have bothered to invent the penis in the first place.
Now I know. It's an antenna for picking up the will of Jesus! What a great idea!
I assume that in cases of marginal reception, putting the antenna up would help ... and that must be where the altar boys come in.