The Sudbury Star reports that the protest/ordination of several Roman Catholic women will take place in Toronto and in a church. Marie Bouclin, one of the women to be "ordained," says of the event, "I hope it will also send a message that oppression and discrimination against women is not the will of God." Her meaning is that the Catholic Church oppresses and discriminates against women. In her complaint against the Church's oppression and discrimination, Bouclin must also include the Church's divine founder, who chose an all-male group for his twelve apostles.

Ms. Bouclin isn't the simple "local woman" portrayed in the article. Instead, she's a published dissenting author. Still, she hasn't adequate knowledge of the history of the Catholic Church, which has seen women exalted to a degree unthinkable in pre- and non-Christian civilizations. The Church has produced the great orders of women religious and has revealed in the figure of the Mother of God the intimacy that humanity can achieve in relation to the Godhead.

As an antidote to Bouclin and the Womenpriests organization, it's useful to read the CDF's 2004 letter "On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World." In this letter, Cardinal Ratzinger repeats the Catholic teaching that while men and women share an axiological equality with regard to their calling to eternal salvation, they nonetheless differ in an absolute way because of the natural characteristics of sex in their respective human natures. Today, when seemingly every religious and secular venue denies the essential natures of things, the CDF offers a reminder of the gifts and limitations that men and women possess in a fundamental way.