I AM glad that the Pope has instructed his priests to go forth into all the world and preach against feminism. Radical feminists always insist that men and women are interchangeable and that the only differences between the sexes are the obvious physical "bits and pieces". The Holy Father rightly makes the point that men and women are quite different psychologically and spiritually, and so they have different callings and roles in life.

These differences between the sexes are not trivial. And they are not to be regretted but rejoiced in. Thank God we are different! It makes life so much more interesting.

Any man who has been married for a decent length of time knows very well how different he is from his wife and he is often amused and cheered up by the fact. For example, men tend to be one-track plodders. I say to my wife: "I'm going to the paper shop love." Then, guess what, without more fuss, I put on my coat and trundle off round the corner to Mr Shakir's newsagents. My wife, however, will say: "I'm off to the bank." But when I look round, she's washing the windows. Tentatively, I query: "I thought you were going to the bank?" She says indignantly: "I am going to the bank - but I thought I'd just give these windows a polish first."

Or if we're going to a dinner at one of the livery halls in the City, she will ask: "Should I wear the blue dress or the red one?" And I reply: "Well, they're both nice." She insists: "No, go on - say which you prefer." So I say: "Well, the red one, then." Immediately she comes back with: "What's wrong with the blue one?" I say: "Nothing, darling: they're both lovely." She finishes me off with: "You just don't care, do you?"

I think the reason women can do five or six jobs at once is because they're programmed to do so for the children. For children are unpredictable in their wants and needs, and the one who cares for them - usually the woman - has to be flexible in her ability to respond. So she has to be able to do a thousand things at once. Of course, men are quite capable of looking after children. But you must have noticed when a child is upset it will usually ask for its mother. Women are obviously tender and cuddly and a distressed child needs softness and a cuddle. If it's sexist to say this, and if it upsets the radical feminists, then so be it. It's true.

Men and women are created to be the opposites that attract. And we are opposites. But the man who had the most instructive things to say about this in the 20th century was the psychologist CJ Jung. He taught that men have some femininity in them and women have some masculinity in them too. Only the man's femininity is unconscious, and so is the woman's masculinity.

Jung went further and said that God himself has his feminine side and this gets represented in the history, theology, paintings and iconography of the church in the person of the Virgin Mary, who is a tender corrective to the macho, rumbustious biblical God who rumbles over the wilderness like a thunderstorm. That's why when I need a bit of religious comfort I pray the Ave Maria.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.