WESTERN society abhors discrimination. It is right to do so. Discrimination should be taboo. Now let us look more closely.

I arranged recently to have lunch with a friend whom I see too rarely. We met in a bar for a drink first. A cool glass of white wine on a searing Roman summer’s day was ideal. When she sipped her wine, my friend said: “I don’t think this wine is as good as usual.” Some years earlier another friend, an actress now living in the US, confessed to me: “I call everyone ‘darling’, because I can’t remember their names.” And before coming to work in Rome, I often found myself at meetings or conferences. People were almost invariably friendly and good-natured. When leaving, however, there were always those who wanted to clasp everyone in a hug as they said goodbye. I learnt quickly to adopt the strategy of the warm smile and firm handshake. I am happy to be hugged, but not necessarily by people who 24 hours earlier had been total strangers.

Discrimination may be taboo, but, if these examples strike any chords, they show us the need nevertheless to be discriminating. My friend in Rome had expectations that were not being met; she was being discriminating, and very properly. We may smile at the actress, because she wasn’t bothering to discriminate at all, she just didn’t want her faulty memory to hurt other people’s feelings. And my smile and handshake with some were also discriminating, signalling difference between relationships; not all are the same.

What we abhor, therefore, is not all discrimination, but discrimination on grounds such as age, race, colour, gender, creed or sexual orientation. Those are factors which, it is agreed, should make no difference. We are all equal and should be treated as such. Here too, however, we need to look more closely.

We rightly affirm human equality and the fundamental dignity which is integral to it, but once again it is wise to be wary in case, when championing equality and smoothing away the differences, we dull our sensitivity to symbol and are left with too bland a view of reality.

In some respects the debate surrounding the ordination of women as ministerial priests, which has reappeared in England more recently because of the further question about their ordination as bishops, may be seen as illustrating the issue.

Whatever the strength of some arguments in favour of those ordinations, such as the discussion about the historical origins of the sacrament, what it means to act in persona Christi, the quality of the candidates, and their conviction that God is calling them, one frequent argument was notably weak. It often seemed the most popular and was usually cast in knock-down form: if a woman can be prime minister, then why can’t a woman be ordained? In other words, to refuse women ordination was discriminatory. And, of course, if ordination is like graduation and ordained ministry no different from any other job, the argument is unanswerable. But if ordination is a sacrament, if it is more than a passing-out parade for active duty, and if ordained ministry is more than a job of work, it needs to be assessed differently.

Sacraments are the servants of symbolism, pointing us beyond time and space and evoking transcendence. Of their nature, they are also arbitrary. Symbols are a part of reality, but they cannot include everything. They shine a light into heights and depths.

A society committed to equality but never discriminating may have some understanding of symbols as tokens — how people dress is symbolic and can be revealing in more ways than one — but it may become blind to other dimensions.

The point here is not about whether or not women can be ordained. That debate is largely over, although the disputants may have agreed only to differ. The point here is about discrimination.

The Book of Proverbs speaks about wisdom building her house and erecting her seven pillars. The text will be heard in many churches this weekend. The number seven implies perfection. Who could claim to be perfectly wise? But at the heart of wisdom is a discrimination that knows how to discriminate.

Monsignor Roderick Strange is the Rector of the Pontifical Beda College, Rome