The Roman Catholic church has ordained women, under extraordinary circumstances, as in Bulgaria during the Communist regime. But in the Celtic Catholic Church (done in by the Synod of Whitby) women were not only priests, but bishops (e.g., Bridget of Kildare). There were co-ed monasteries, even. It was not unusual for a monk and nun to set out on journeys together. A nun could be a lawyer, a physician. But this wasn't in the "Roman Empire" model adopted by the RC church and so...Whitby. Sure, the date of Easter and the type of tonsure are important, but it was the forcing of the Celtic church into subservience that was the actual agenda of the Synod. It could be argued that the Synod was the actual beginning of British dominance of Ireland.