This week’s NY Times Magazine carries a question posed to Randy Cohen, who writes “The Ethicist” column, and his answer strikes me as ethically questionable. But first the question and relevant portion of his answer:

“I belong to a Catholic religious order and am in formation to become a priest. As part of my training, I attended a university that was founded by my order and whose president is a priest and a member of the order. Nonreligious students also attend, but we religious students receive scholarships. Is this akin to any other scholarship, like that for an athlete, or is it discriminatory, especially because the order does not admit women? NAME WITHHELD, PORTLAND, ORE.
There’s nothing wrong with a religious order establishing a school for its members… What is at issue, as you suggest, is sex discrimination: your order’s refusal to admit women… You might regard yourself as preparing to be a beneficiary of entrenched workplace discrimination, an ethically troubling position”.

Oh really? Is it inherently unethical to support a men-only clergy?

In the interest of full disclosure, I ask that question as a practicing Orthodox Jew who supports the ordination of women as rabbis. But I also appreciate that mine may not be the only ethical response to honoring both thousands of years of tradition/wisdom and contemporary insight/sensitivity about what is most ethical.
The traditional understanding of any faith which bars women from the clergy would have us believe that men and women have separate roles in religious society not simply because of the physical realities which shaped members’ existence, but because of deep spiritual/psychological/dispositional differences between men and women. Are they right? I don’t know, but scientific research suggests that there is something to that position. Given the deep connection between our minds, bodies, and spirits that should not be so surprising.
But does that knowledge of fundamental differences between the sexes justify not admitting women to full equality in religious leadership? I can only say that the track record of any argument defending “separate but equal” treatment, essentially the one made in all communities which make it their practice to exclude women from the clergy, is not good.

So we are left with a question – how do we balance the need to properly honor men’s and women’s experience, and the fact that too often doing so becomes an excuse for one side’s dominance over the other? Perhaps, we begin by rethinking our definitions of equality. Must “equal” always appear the same to the outside observer, or might it be better measured by gaining a deeper appreciation of the internal experience of those affected?
It seems to me that Randy Cohen was seduced by the same well-intentioned arrogance that animates the question of women’s ordination on both sides of the issue: insisting that when other peoples experience does not match what one side or the other wants for itself, it is because those who differ from them are either less ethical or less religious. But both ethics and religion are bigger than that and it’s high time to integrate that awareness into whatever spiritual practice we follow.