Last June, a bronze public sculpture was unveiled in Sheffield city centre to honour those women who kept the munitions factories going during two world wars. Dubbed “women of steel”, over 100 of them turned up for a civic lunch held in their honour. And for National Poetry Day, the BBC commissioned a poem from Rachel Bower, inspired by the statue: “We are women of steel, … women who cry, women who rise, women at the heart of this town.” Sheffield has a long and distinguished history of strong women. The Sheffield Female Political Association was the first women’s suffrage organisation in the UK.

So what possessed the Church of England to appoint as the next bishop of Sheffield a man who does not believe that women can be priests? This despite the fact that a third of the clergy he will be responsible for in the diocese of Sheffield are themselves women. Fr Philip North will be their boss, responsible for their priestly ministry – yet he thinks their very existence as priests is a theological impossibility. Yes, he has said much about how he promises to be nice to women and work with them. But he won’t receive communion if a woman is presiding. In fact, he won’t even receive communion if a male priest is presiding and they have been ordained by a woman. And The Society, of which he is a member, has now begun to issue identity cards so that priests can demonstrate their women-free lineage. “Now we have male priests ordained by women bishops. We can’t receive their ministry, but how can you tell who ordained whom?” explained the secretary of the council of bishops of The Society, Dr Colin Podmore.

Sheffield people are up in arms. Writing in the parish magazine of her church, St Peter, Ellesmere, Sioned-Mair Richards, who is the assistant police and crime commissioner for South Yorkshire but was writing in a personal capacity, expressed her indignation in no uncertain terms: “Substitute the words black priest for woman priest. How shocked do you feel?” And over on the east side of the city, the team rector of Sheffield’s Manor estate parish, Canon Julie Upton, has written: “Local people from both church and the wider community in this large urban/estate parish have been expressing confusion since Bishop Philip’s nomination. They see his unwillingness to ordain women as priests as a challenge to their understanding of justice, fairness and equal opportunity and difficult to reconcile with an inclusive church or faith.” Little wonder that Tuesday’s edition of the local paper, the Star, splashed with this question across its front page: “Time for Sheffield to make a stand on bishop’s outdated views on women?”

When the C of E agreed to have women bishops, it also agreed, as a condition of passing the women bishops legislation, that so-called traditionalist bishops were just as welcome in the church as women bishops. They called it “mutual flourishing” and made the issue seem like one of accommodating differing varieties of theological opinion. But this is a category mistake. For there is an order of difference between you and your boss having conflicting opinions on some matter of church doctrine and having a boss that believes, as a matter of principle, that you are ontologically incapable of doing the job you are being paid for on account of possessing a vagina. This fundamental asymmetry is carefully obscured in the typically woolly C of E phrase “mutual flourishing”. And note that this live-and-let-live approach is never extended towards those of us, for instance, who believe in same-sex marriage. No talk of “mutual flourishing” here.

I wish no ill on Fr Philip North. He is a popular priest in the church and has worked in some tough parishes, much to his credit. “This is not personal,” as I said to one of his supporters this week. “Well, it seems pretty personal to him,” came the reply. And I suppose it does. But likewise, it has felt pretty personal to thousands of hard-working women clergy who are told that women are incapable of receiving ordination – or that, as someone once charmingly put it, you can no more ordain a woman than you can a pork pie. Nick Clegg, the MP for Sheffield Hallam, famously wore a “this is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt. I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing the new bishop in one of those.