The Church, in studying the possible ordination of women, seeks above all to remain consistent with the will of her Founder. She sees herself as the depositary, not the owner, of a truth and of certain means of distributing divine grace.

Any other consideration, however interesting, carries less weight for the Church than her desire to be faithful to what the Lord Jesus intended when he instituted the sacraments.

An illustrious feminist, Régine Pernoud, for example, wrote in Le Figaro on November 19, 1992 : 

“Because I am a feminist, profoundly so, the decision recently taken by the Anglican Church concerning women's access to the priesthood seems to me to be contrary to the very interests of women.

It risks confirming women's belief that promotion means doing everything men do, and progress means doing everything exactly like them.

In the light of history, this seems to be a twofold error: on the nature of the priesthood, but also, and above all, on the aptitudes of men and women, which are equally different.

How can we slip so easily into this simplistic confusion between equality and sameness?

Being equal has never meant being the same!

A world of individuals in series, same size, same tastes, same looks: the height of boredom; convenient to house, it's true, in our hutch-like architectures; but life there proves unbearable. 

The Gospel teaches us that men and women are equal, that each person is autonomous, free and responsible, with the same rights.

And the Apostles themselves, when Christ announced the absolute reciprocity of duties between husband and wife, were offended: it went so obviously against the general mentality of their time!

This makes Christ's decision all the more significant when, on the eve of his death, he chose twelve men from among those around him, both male and female, to receive the sacred deposit - in the deepest sense of the word - of Eucharistic consecration at the Last Supper in the upper room in Jerusalem.

It's worth noting that later, in the same upper room, women will mingle with men to receive the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

This succession of events, handed down to us by the Gospels, is very explicit for later times: in the absolute social equality of persons, there is a difference in functions.

Women were invited to pass on the Word: mystics, theologians, some of them doctors of the Church.

Almost everywhere in Europe, the conversion of a people began under the action of a woman: Clotilde in France, Berthe in England, Olga in Russia, not to mention Theodosia in Spain and Theodolinde in Lombardy.

But priestly service is demanded of men (...).

The Church, being itself a society of the baptized, is, and always will be, a reflection of civil society, in which it is called upon to play the role of ferment.

In the course of its second millennium, the Church has been influenced by this return to antiquity, which has occurred almost everywhere in the West, and particularly in France, with the consequent reappearance of slavery and the removal of women in particular from these two domains of Knowledge and Power, which they have only partially and painfully regained in our own time.

In fact, this trend was already apparent in canon law, which had been influenced since the 12th century by Roman law, which was centralizing and authoritarian, and ignored women.

In 1298, for example, we saw the birth of strict enclosure, which was applied to women's religious orders and became increasingly rigorous over time (...). 

The mistrust of women that was evident in the classical world has only recently begun to dissipate, as we all know, in both religious and civil society.

What we can hope for at the dawn of the third millennium is that the new balance we hope for will be established without any confusion.

Today, we see many women leading high school chaplaincies or taking on teaching duties in the broadest sense of the term.

Wouldn't it be time to turn to them for everything that corresponds to their specific potential: educating, transmitting, distributing.

In this day and age, these are vast areas in which there is a glaring lack - and for good reason! - an obvious lack.

We complain that the religious conscience is no longer awake: it's up to the younger generations to establish cause-and-effect relationships and remedy the situation.

Jean-Paul Savignac
La femme et le sacerdoce
Congrégation pour la doctrine de la foi