Basically, the problem is that Pope Francis works with the image of God as a male God.
As everybody knows, orthodox Christians for centuries have claimed to be monotheists. But they hold a basically polytheistic view of the supposedly monotheistic deity -- as expressed in the orthodox doctrine of the divine trinity (three supposed persons in one monotheistic God).
In the orthodox Christian doctrine, the three supposed persons in the divine trinity are equal with one another.
However, over the centuries, the three supposed divine persons have been imagined to be masculine persons.
So in orthodox Christian doctrine, it is OK to imagine the three divine persons as masculine and equal.
By analogy, one could argue that it is OK to imagine all masculine human beings, as determined by their natural physiological determinants of their sexuality, to be somehow equal in nature with one another -- at least in theory.
However, this analogy calls attention to the fact that there appears to be no such warrant for reasoning by analogy to the possible equality in nature of men and women.
But this appearance may not tell the entire story.
For the sake of discussion, let's hold on to the analogy of the three masculine divine persons being equal with one another -- that is, each is imagined to be equally masculine with the others.
Now, what if it is the case, that girls and women also have a masculine dimension in their psyches that is equal in nature to the masculine dimension in boys and men.
If this were the case, the girls and women would be equally masculine in nature to boys and men.
But if this were the case, then the analogy with the three supposedly masculine divine persons would work as a way to say that it is OK to say that girls and women are equal in nature with boys and men.
So do girls and women have a masculine dimension in their psyches that is equal in nature to the masculine dimension that boys and men have in their psyches?
In the book THE DUALITY OF HUMAN EXISTENCE: AN ESSAY ON PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION (1966), David Bakan in psychology at the University of Chicago discusses two dimensions that all humans have by nature in their psyches: (1) agency (stereotypically masculine) and (2) communion (stereotypically feminine).
If he is right, then girls and women have a masculine dimension in their psyches that by nature is equal to the masculine dimension in the psyches of boys and men.
Vicki S. Helgeson in psychology at Carnegie Mellon University works with Bakan's understanding of agency and communion in her own research, which she reports in her 700-page textbook THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENDER, now in its fourth edition.
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