The issue of the role of women in the Church has become one of the axes of the current synodal process, especially in countries like Germany, where the so-called “Synodal Way” has driven reform proposals that directly affect the understanding of ministry and the ecclesial structure. In this context, the French Dominican, Édouard Divry, offers a theological response that points to the core of the problem: the tendency to reread the faith from ideological schemes alien to Revelation.
For Divry, one of the most problematic assumptions of these currents is to hold that the Church has not fully “rehabilitated” women. This approach implies assuming that the Church has deviated from Christ’s intention. In his words, it is a “Protestant-type presumption” that “directly confronts the divine constitution of the Church.”
From the Catholic perspective, this hypothesis does not hold. The Church may need purification in its members, but it has not betrayed its essential constitution. Pretending to correct it from external categories means introducing a “hermeneutic rupture” that Benedict XVI already denounced as a logic of “discontinuity and rupture.”
The theologian also dismantles the idea that the hierarchical structure is a later construction or a form of domination. Christ himself instituted a concrete organization by choosing the Twelve and conferring on Peter a singular mission.
“It is not a sociological domination,” explains Divry, but rather “a sacramental order oriented toward service.” Confusing this plane with the fundamental equality of all the baptized leads to errors of interpretation. As Saint Paul reminds us, “there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Ga 3:28), which does not eliminate the diversity of functions within the Church.
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