I agree, Monica. It's always seemed to me that even our most generous efforts at formal "reconciliation" have had a win/lose feel to them. The endgame always seems to be submission to central authority and acceptance of doctrine rather than kinship in the Body of Christ. I've often wondered what the point is.

True reconciliation will, by necessity, mean a surrendering of our insistence on things that really don't matter. An exclusively male clergy is one of them. And, by my thinking, papal infallibility is right up there with it.