The Church affirmed the role and dignity of women in society

In the Roman Empire, the pater familias had the right of life and death over his wife and children, who were legally his property. Among the Jews, women were also treated as inferior — an adulterous woman could be stoned, while the man faced lesser punishment. Within this reality, the Gospel was revolutionary: Saint Paul commanded husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, overturning the axis of power toward love and service. Thus, the Church replaced domination with responsibility, and woman — once treated as a thing — became recognized as a daughter of God and co-heir of grace.

While paganism degraded women to ornaments or possessions, Christianity gave them voice, honor, and purpose. In the early centuries, many women embraced the faith because they saw among Christians husbands who loved and respected their wives. Women converted families and sustained domestic communities, becoming the silent pillars of the Church. Monogamy and the indissoluble marriage bond offered moral and material stability, allowing women to cease being traded as property and to become the foundation of a loving and secure family.

Among pagan peoples, polygamy and abandonment were common. Christianity taught that husband and wife become one flesh and that fidelity mirrors God’s covenant with his people. By establishing monogamy, the Church elevated marriage to a sacrament and the home to a place of sanctification. The woman ceased being a replaceable possession and became a unique and worthy companion. The Church also consecrated the image of the queen beside the king as a symbol of shared dignity. This Christian vision built stable homes and civilizations founded on love.

Enlightenment and Masonic writers in the 18th century popularized the false notion that the Middle Ages were an age of ignorance — a story that also erased what the Church had done for women’s dignity. Yet universities, hospitals, and schools were born under the Church’s patronage. Women, such as abbesses and queens, promoted culture and charity; the Church’s ethic of equal dignity before God was lived in those institutions, not invented by later critics. The term 'Renaissance' masked a revival of pagan vices — idolatry, adultery, and slavery — which Christianity had restrained. While Enlightenment propaganda exalted 'reason' and diminished the Church’s role in science and education, it also wrote out abbesses, schools for girls under Church care, and the long defense of women’s dignity. The Church taught reason illuminated by faith — a harmony that built true wisdom and moral progress, including for women.

The Church never condemned women’s work but warns against turning it into an escape from love and family. Many modern women believe they are free because they earn their own money, yet they live exhausted and unloved. The boss who praises them in the morning forgets them by evening, while a Christian husband, living his faith, would love and care for them like Christ loves the Church. True freedom is not independence from everyone but dependence on the one who loves us — as the Church depends on Christ. Freedom blossoms in love, not in loneliness.

Jesus chose twelve men as apostles, not because He devalued women — after all, Mary is the supreme model of the Church — but to manifest the sacrificial and representative nature of priesthood. The priest is one who offers himself and serves, not one who rules. Women share in this same mystery differently: by receiving love and multiplying it in the home, in charity, catechesis, and consecrated life. True greatness is not standing at the altar but serving with love — and in this, women mirror Christ Himself, who became the servant of all.