I can predict only one thing with certainty about the next pope: He will be 100% biologically male.
That fact and that he will be chosen by an all-male College of Cardinals, which convenes May 7, to lead a global institution that refuses to compromise on its teaching concerning an all-male priesthood will strike many as antiquated and even offensive.
Today, the prevailing view among cultural elites has rendered them unable - or more likely, unwilling - to define what a woman is, even in the most basic biological sense.
And while our contemporary Western culture struggles to delineate "woman" in the year 2025, the church has been fine-tuning its teachings on her as complement to man while fully his equal since anno Domini (A.D.) year 1.
The Christian approach to woman has been radically countercultural since the beginning. The longest recorded conversation Jesus has in the Bible is with a woman of ill repute. He chose a woman to deliver the news of his resurrection and the message of salvation to the disciples. And most significantly, he chose a woman from whose flesh to take his own divine body and then made her queen of heaven and earth.
This in a culture where women had little to no rights and were widely viewed as categorically inferior to men.
More than 2,000 years later, the church's teachings on women remain radically countercultural. The church stands boldly athwart of a post-Christian culture where women are commodified, objectified and exploited through promiscuity and prostitution, sex trafficking, artificial reproductive technology and toxic reproductive pharmaceuticals, abortion and surrogacy.
Further, the church has been unflinching in its opposition to gender ideology, the logical ends of which erase women as a category, and at great cost to our basic legal standing and foundational human rights.
But because the Catholic Church does not ordain women as priests, according to social elite label makers, it must be sexist!
In the 15 years since I entered the church after reading a series of Catholic thinkers on human sexuality, I have yet to meet a single Catholic woman of any political stripe, socioeconomic, professional or marital status, or age who has expressed frustration over the fact that the priesthood is all male. We love our priests. We do not want to be them.
The Catholic women I know - and I meet weekly in a church basement with a diverse group of them - are grappling with the same struggles as other women such as the pain of infertility, marital conflict, addiction and the challenge of forming happy families in a culture defined by radical individualism.
To us, the church is a source of community and boundless consolation. Being a Catholic woman is not about power but about love, self-sacrifice and friendship. These were the deeper hallmarks of Christ's ministries, and they define authentically Christian life.
Being a Christian, as it turns out, is not about power and influence, but about conquering those distorted aims in service to others, a mission women live out particularly well in our "feminine genius," as Pope Saint John Paul II liked to call it.
"Through the insight which is so much a part of your womanhood you enrich the world's understanding and help to make human relations more honest and authentic," he wrote in his 1995 "Letter to Women."
And so, you will forgive us for refusing to cede any ground on the rights and dignity of women to a culture that cannot bring itself to define woman and holds up the likes of pornographic actress Bonnie Blue, whose wealth is built on setting sexual records and who is often associated with so-called women's empowerment.
Instead, you will find us holding fast to a faith that continues, two centuries later, to promote the different but equal roles of men and women in living out Christian virtue.
These different but mutually cooperative roles reflect God's desire for our cooperation with him. And understanding those differences rather than trying to stamp them out is essential to authentically elevating the role − particularly of women − in the church and in the world.
Defending this uniquely Christian principle now falls to the next successor of St. Peter. Catholic women the world over will soon look to him to courageously carry out that most important task.
Ashley McGuire is a senior fellow with The Catholic Association and cohost of the nationally syndicated radio show "Conversations with Consequences."