The competition would be on a Sunday morning, a day I had requested off for “a personal enrichment experience.” I would not know many people in the crowd. No one from church would be there. Men and women would perform poses of “front double biceps,” “side triceps” and “back lat spread,” while at the other end of the exhibit hall, judges would award ribbons for apple pie and pickled beets. This was a wholesome environment; still, I knew I couldn’t share widely what I was doing.

Decades ago my church decided that the ordination of women was a just and morally responsible thing. Some people left over the decision. Some people still tell me they struggle with the idea. Now many women serve as priests, and many parishioners applaud this fact.

But somehow, despite our belief that both sexes can serve the church, it seems there’s still something unnerving about a priest who is a woman. It has to do with having a woman’s body.

A parishioner told me that he thought I was a great priest, but that if I became pregnant, it would be too weird for him to see me at the altar. Merely holding hands with my husband, even when I am not in clerical clothes, has elicited the comment “Can you do that? I mean, in public?” Another parishioner told me I was too petite to be a priest. I’m 5-10. I have never been called “petite.” I think he meant “female.”