From the beginning He made them

In the midst of contemplating how the immensely popular practise of self-submission to the-creator-and-destroyer basically fails to be a religion (at least under its presently-immensely-popular superstitious self-opposition to anything like reason), this in the midst of a f™ discussion confusing the relation between Man and reason in this immensely popular &.c. with, the relation between Men and Women in the same, and in other parts of the world; in the midst of all this, I say, the word came to me (not a new word, rather one you've heard every Easter Vigil)

And it shall be a lamb without blemish, a male, of one year: according to which rite also you shall take a kid.

You see, I'd been casting about in my memory to see if I couldn't recall if there were any sense in which attempting to apply the Sacrament of Holy Orders in any degree to nonstandard matter would be a violence to the nature of that matter. I don't think I found a real case for that conjecture, but never mind.

It isn't that female beasts were never used in sacrifice — peace offerings could be male or female, sin offerings for individual common folk seem to have been female, and a ewe was required for the cleansing of a leper (though I can't tell, in the ritual described, when if ever that ewe is killed) — but definitely they mean different things, and the male and female sacrifices are not generally interchangeable, or He wouldn't have bothered to be specific.

Come now to the New Covenant. The Sacrifice par excellence is also our passover. The Priest of our passover is also the Victim, and so it is with its daily re-presentation. The Lord has said that the passover victim is a male, even before the transposition of Levi for the Firstborn. I really don't want to be about "proof-texting" as it is called, I'm all about the poetry; but there it is. If the priest is the victim, and the sacrifice is the passover, then the victim must be a male, and so therefore must the priest be as well.