This essay, by an Anglican priest who is professor of patristics at Union Seminary in New York, has been probably the single most influential theological piece for American Episcopalians. It addresses directly the rationale later offered by the Vatican declaration Inter Insigniores 27, that women cannot be ordained because it is necessary that the priest must bear a ‘natural resemblance’ to Christ who was male (a line of reasoning also taken by the Orthodox Bishop Kallistos in the section ‘The Priest as Icon’ in his widely distributed article ‘Man, Woman, and the Priesthood of Christ.’)