Women Priests

I've been reading a book by an American convert to Orthodox Christianity.  He finds the Idea of women priests absurd and the existence of women priests in the Anglican Church is one of the reason he, as well as some other Orthodox converts I've known, has left the Anglican fold.

Now this puts me in a girlish snit, as I don't see why somebody with the same kind of body I have can't legitimately be a priest.

The question is, however you feel about the idea of women priests, can you use the idea in a story.  If you are indifferent to religion, a woman who wanted to be a priest would seem as absurd as he would find her, though not ungodly.  In a story written from an atheistic viewpoint such desires could be used to show a female character as power hungry, overly fascinated with religion, or simply immature.

In a story written from an Orthodox viewpoint one could use a desire to be a priest as an indication of a woman's spiritual immaturity.  As she matures her ambitions could change, she could lose interest in religion, which from a Christian viewpoint would be a further fall,  become a novice monastic, decide to marry someone and forget about the priesthood, or go though some other spiritual metamorphosis.

Another possibility, though not one an Orthodox Christian would consider correct would be for her to become a Pagan or Anglican priest.  While Orthodox Christians wouldn't see this as at all positive, others would.

Depending on an author's beliefs, her or she can take the fairly simple idea that a woman wants to be a priest and run in several directions with it.  Science and Science Fiction of course could add other wrinkles, for instance the woman could choose to be masculinized in her quest for ordination, or the woman could be an intersex.  The key to a good story in a case like the one above which deals with a complex topics is to make all the characters complex.  In a good story, the woman could not simply be an ungodly feminist and Orthodox tradition should not be presented as just mindless patriarchy.