That needs a little unpacking. The non-ordination of women does not have the same doctrinal level as (say) the doctrines on the Trinity, the Incarnation, the nature of the Eucharist and so forth.
The clearest way of putting this is as follows:
There could NOT be a revelation from God tomorrow that God is not God, that there are four Persons in the Trinity, that Jesus was not Man, that Jesus was not God - and so forth.
But there *could* be a revelation from God tomorrow that women can be ordained.
I don't believe this will happen: I believe that the non-ordination of women is well-supported by Christ not having female apostles.
But the intrinsic 'hardness' of this doctrine is at the same level as that of the non-inclusion of gentiles in the Church (which matter was conclusively disambiguated by divine revelation to St Peter).
You said it better than I did. I was still on the first cup of coffee. Thus, while the brain was engaged, only the first few cylinders were firing. Thank you.
The teaching is one iota short of an "infallible" proclamation. In the 1994 Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, the Holy Father said:
4. Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.
Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.
I say that it is one iota short because it does not explicitly pronounce an anathema on dissenters (although per canon law, dissent would fall within the definition of heresy). One possible reason for his declaration (vice definition) is that this was already part of the Church's deposito fidei and does not need to be re-defined.
Sorry, I must disagree with you here. Catholic doctrine does not proceed by new "revelations from God"; we aren't Mormons. Public revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle, and private revelation has no power to promulgate new doctrine.
The teaching that women cannot be ordained is infallibly known, from the ordinary magisterium, from 2000 years of tradition, and from Ordinatio. A teaching that is infallibly known cannot change.
Is it as central to the faith as the Trinity or the Divinity of Christ? No, of course not. But it is just as unchangeable.
Bravo Sierra
your analysis ignores the real issue: Did God make a mistake when he devised two sexes? And, if so, is our gender an artificial construct (i.e. made up by man, something that feminists preach in Universities) or is gender something that is deeply rooted in our entire being?
If men and women are different, it doesn’t mean they aren’t equal, merely that they have different roles in society.
As Edith Stein wrote: often a man and a woman can do the same secular work, but a woman brings into the job her femininity and motherhood, because she is not just a neutral worker but a woman who is working.
The priesthood being male goes back before Christ, into the Jewish priesthood. Man is the leader, the head, the priest and the protecter of the weak. Woman is the heart, the mother, and the spouse. Feminists would like to overturn these ideas, and they are wonderful for young women, but the “fruits” of this idea is to eliminate children.
That is why the “womynpriests” often support abortion, homosexuality, married priests, etc. They are rejecting the idea of the feminine as important, substituting the idea of the woman as man instead.
My mother used to say that God allows men to be priests to make up for the fact that men can’t be mothers. The liberals hate motherhood as a meaningful role model...