Matthew 10:1
And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity.
In our age of egalitarian dogma, it is easy to forget that no sacrament is a civil right. Sacraments are gifts, given on the terms that the Giver lays down. Just as the Church is not free to baptise in wine and consecrate a cup of water as the blood of Christ, so she is not free to ordain anybody and everybody. She must use the right “matter” for the sacrament of Holy Order just as she must use the right matter for Baptism and Eucharist. Wine is the right matter to symbolise the blood of Christ and the wrong matter to symbolise the washing, drowning, and new life of Baptism. Likewise, water is the right matter to symbolise Baptism but the wrong matter to symbolise the blood of Christ. They are natural symbols of the sacraments they embody. Water is not “inferior” to wine nor wine to water. The whole question of inferior/superior is nonsense. So with Holy Orders. Christ and the apostles chose only baptised males for the sacrament of Holy Orders because males are natural symbols of the Christ the Cosmic Groom and women are not. Women are not thereby “inferior” to men. On the contrary, in Christ Jesus there is neither “male nor female” (Galatians 3:28). Man and woman, like water and wine, are of equal dignity. But only baptized men are the proper matter for the Holy just as only bread and wine, not meat and milk, is the proper matter for the Eucharist and only water is the proper matter for Baptism. The Church has no more power to change this than to start baptising people in Pepsi.
