A woman can (symbolically) be "The Good Shepherdess," the "Prodigal's Mother," etc. With the necessary gifts, women can and do fill the "roles" of preacher, prophetess, mystic, counselor, minister-of-whatever, president of the Parish Council, judge on a Marriage Tribunal, Chancellor of the Diocese, rector of a Pontifical University, even Doctor of the Church.
She can be above and beyond all things, a handmaid, and a saint.
THE one thing she cannot embody is Christ the Head and Spouse of the Church.
If the priest represents Christ in some symbolic sense nuptially --- and to me, the argument rests on this ---then a woman cannot possibly "embody" Christ the Bridegroom.
Women, like men, are called to be members of the very Body of Christ and "partakers in the Divine Nature," according to St. Peter (2 Peter 1:4)!
So it's not --- to me --- precisely that a woman can't be "in Persona Christi," but that she can't be as "Christus Sponsum" --- Christ the Husband: not as an embodied sign.
I think that’s pretty much what Mad Dawg said, and when I read it, I said to myself, “Yo, that’s it!” There are times in the Christ church when the human being is not just “being like Christ,” but “being Christ,” and at those key point, the relevant human being has to be a man, because Jesus Christ was a man.
It’s not a question of whether a woman can perform (function X) as well as a man. You can find some woman who can perform most functions as well as or better than some man, and vice versa. The functions that aren’t transferable across the sexes include giving birth to babies (has to be a woman) and offering the Eucharistic sacrifice (has to be a man).