"It's the end of Anglo-Catholicism"

Why pay attention to Anglicanism?

We're the default church of all Anglo-Saxon countries including the US. Watch an American movie made before 1960. If there's a wedding chances are very good that they'll use the BCP (Dearly Beloved...).

Anglicans won WWII (on the Western side). All the general officers (save Ike) were Anglicans (including John Sidney McCain).

The American Aristocracy was Anglican until quite recently (and hasn't it gone down hill).

Chapel *needs* Church (whether Rome or Canterbury) for the intellectual leadership.

We're the 3rd largest Christian Church at 70 million (almost all of them in the 3rd world and very orthodox).

Great churches and music.

Why not priestesses:

The Priest represents Christ and the congregation represents the church. Christ is God the head/father of the church and in a Western religion like Christianity, the church is the wife/woman/bride of the male figure of Christ. A priestess would convert Christ into the female bride of the male congregation/church. This genderbending imagery would reverse the power relationship between God and Man and convert God into the receptacle of Man's gifts. While this might work in Greenwich Village, even there it would completely change the nature and the relationship of God and Man and abolish the very Christian conception of the nature of God.

Priests in the Orthodox, Roman, and Anglican traditions are not merely teachers (like Rabbis), counselors (Ministers), theologians, lawyers, elders (Presbyters), or prayer leaders (like Imams). The priesthood combines all of these jobs but there is an additional aspect -- a priest is a magister, a magician. Priests perform sacerdotal magic. They transubstantiate, they act as an intermediary for the passage of grace from God to Man, they drive out demons, they act as a focus of God's healing power. The power to perform sacerdotal magic is not something everyone has. The traditional Christian church believes it to be a sex-linked characteristic. (Note that believers in non-Christian magic and witchcraft also believe that magical powers differ between men and women and even between virgins and those with sexual experience.) For followers of the Undivided Church, sacraments and other magics performed by a properly ordained man "work" but would fail to work if performed by a woman even if she's gone through an ordination ceremony.

Then there are the practical reasons:

Political Differences - Priestesses are much more likely than priests to be "soft". They are much more likely to fall victim to the naturalist heresy. To convert the Christian church into an Earth Cult. See your local TEC church. Part of a priest's job is to serve as a war leader. Men average better war leaders than women and are much more likely to actually take on the job.

Demographic Differences - It is well known to employment researchers that when a job category reaches a certain level of female participation the men leave and the job category becomes mostly female. In the case of churches, female-headed churches will be mostly female in the pews. Male-headed churches will be demographically even in the pews. Evangelicals and Traditionalist Anglicans have a good gender balance (particularly on Sunday). Most everyone else doesn't. Roman churches have tended to try and compensate for male priests by giving all the other "front" jobs to women and male attendance is falling there too.

I do actual counts in any church I attend and the traditionalist Anglicans are pretty even in the pews. I find Catholic churches woman heavy and everyone will have seen articles bemoaning the lack of men in most Protestant denominations.

i love all this shitty theology. Things like, "jesus was male," so priests must be male. Really, how absurd.