[cloudmountain]

To me it isn’t so much that only men can be the model for Christ in performing the sacraments. Certainly there are Christ-ly women in the world, and women who have laid down their lives for others as Christ did.
Rather it’s an empirical fact of human nature, that female-led institutions become squishy. In the Church in particular, women seem to feminize the priesthood, or the ministry, so much that it’s not a fit place for male leadership any more.
My daughters don’t know yet that they will probably come to see male leadership as a good thing, especially in the home and in the Church. What they do understand is that just about every church with female ministers or priests is pro-abortion - and my daughters are very much against abortion.
As are my sons, but a male priesthood doesn’t bother them at all.

You make a lot of sense. I've seen the same "squishiness" with women ministers, though I am Catholic, and have deprecated the female ministry. A pregnant one may seem to be a "wonderful, sweet" thing but, then, she is like the married minister, she is DIVIDED in her time, efforts and heart. I think celebacy is the best for ministers and male ones are better--Jesus' model.

Jesus came as a man and chose men as His apostles.
I've come to realize that it was for a reason that He did this.

When a family is led by a man, especially a Godly man, the family tends to pray and thrive. This seems to be a solid basis for the human social unit: the family.

I went through all the women's lib stuff and KNEW that men and women are more different than the surface. They are, as you write, empirically different, with different strengths, sources and purposes in the Divine Plan.
I had to do a lot of growing-up to figure that one out. It helped that I am a teacher, college age, of BOTH men and women. BOY, are they different from each other.

[heartwood]

My second cousin was raised Methodist and from the time she was a small child she wanted to be a minister. After church she would stand on the bed and give the sermon. She did grow up to be a minister and served as a chaplain in the military. But some time after she came back into civilian life, for some reason I do not know, she and her husband converted to Catholicism. The ways of God!

Now she works as a pastoral assistant, and having seen some in action I do tend to be dubious about the pastoral assistant program, as a sort of side door for female administration and a leftwing “therapeutic” approach to faith... but I have no evidence to lay those charges against my cousin.

I wish the RC Church would promote the diaconate to help out where priests are thin on the ground.