Divided Anthropology: An Ontological Look at the Vatican's Rejection of Women in the Priesthood

In recent decades the Roman Catholic community has wrestled with the possibility of ordaining women into the ministerial priesthood, but church authorities have repeatedly spoken with a definitive "no." This paper critically examines that official "no," and in unknotting the theological and philosophical justification for this decision, a unique anthropology was also being discovered. It appears that the magisterium has inadvertently constructed a divided anthropology wherein men and women have different ontological essences.