"At the subsequent ecumenical council convened by Pius XII's successor, John XXIII, Cardinal Leo-Jozef Suenens, primate of Belgium, vigorously promoted the renewal of women's religious life.
Consequently, Vatican II urged religious communities to return to their "biblical roots" and their founding charisms and to develop a greater measure of engagement with the modern world."
What kind of biblical roots ? There are no biblical roots promoting religious women's emancipation , well , until 1962 when took place the Second Vatican Council ..
Just a reminder : The Catechism of the Catholic Church sets it out clearly, quoting the decree Inter insigniores:
Only a baptized man (vir) receives sacred ordination. The Lord Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ’s return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord Himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.
We need to understand that Christians believe God to be the essence of divine omnipotence. To put it crudely, He doesn’t make mistakes. When He became Incarnate as a human being, He did so at a precise and exact moment in human history, which has been planned from all eternity. From the beginning, God had chosen that there would be a Jewish people, among whom His divine Son would be born. Their own priestly traditions would form part of the background and culture which would help them — and others — to see and know Him. Every detail about the Incarnation was known in the mind of God. He was born into the fullness of time.
He didn’t say: “Oops, sorry — I made a terrible mistake! I should have been born into the latter half of the twentieth century, so as to have benefited from the We are Church movement in Germany, or the feminist workshop sessions of America, or the Equal Opportunities legislation in Britain.” On the contrary, He was and remains omnipotent. He knew exactly what He was doing.
It is worth pointing out that, in choosing His apostles, Christ was not awarding them the priesthood as a reward for good behavior: courage, intelligence, or skill. On the contrary. One — the rock on which the Church was to be founded — denied Him, another doubted His Resurrection, and one even betrayed Him. The priesthood is not a badge of good-conduct (although, like eleven out of the first twelve, millions of Christ’s priests down the centuries have led heroic and noble lives). Rather, just as bread and wine are the essential “matter” of the Eucharist, so are men the “matter” of the priesthood.
