of the ban is that of historical tradition. They contend that women have never served as priests throughout the history of the Church: "The Roman Catholic Church's constant tradition has found it unacceptable to permit women's ordination, with the exception of a few 'heretical sects.' It can therefore find no justification for breaking a 2000-year-old practice" (St. Pierre 10).
Led by feminist Catholics, writers in favor of ordination have argued against each one of these points. First, on the issue of the appearance of Jesus in the body of a man, proponents of ordination contend that the primary reason for Jesus to appear in male form was to fulfill the Messianic prophecy of Jewish writings: "The Messiah was to be David's royal son: A Jewish freeman" (Hewitt 46). A woman appearing within this patriarchal culture would not have been able to carry God's message to the Israelites simply because they would have refused to listen to her.
Although Jesus needed to be male in order to fulfill the prophecies, "the Bible stresses Jesus' humanness rather
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