One of the earliest arguments against women\u27s ordination the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops articulated in 1972 was that, since the incarnation of God was in a male, this culminates in a male priesthood. This reflects a hierarchical anthropology well-known from Christianity\u27s earliest encounters with the Greco-Roman world, whereby the male was associated with the mind, reason, and the spirit, while the female was associated with the body, passion, and the material world.1 In fact, some Greek doctors and philosophers thought that every fetus began as a male, but those that didn\u27t develop fully became female.2 Thomas Laqueur calls this the one- sex body theory-there is one normative body, the male, and the female body is just an underdeveloped version of it. 3 Several of the early Church fathers were well aware of these notions, and added to them a scriptural layer that read Eve\u27s secondary creation from Adam\u27s rib as evidence of woman\u27s subordination and incompleteness compared to man. Eve\u27s susceptibility to temptation later in the story only proved that she should be carefully managed by a man. This gendered anthropology was used to legitimate male control of women on the grounds of female incapacity and male superiority throughout much of western history, so that only recently have women, rather than their fathers , husbands or the state, been legally allowed Lo make decisions affecting their bodies, their children and their property
