Former Irish president says all-male family synod is bonkers

Tuesday, June 24th, 2014

Former Irish president Mary McAleese has described the Pope’s plans to canvass bishops’ opinions on family life as “completely bonkers”.

She strongly questioned Pope Francis calling a synod later this year on family life.

Ms McAleese said there was “just something profoundly wrong and skewed” about asking clergy for their views on this subject, when most are celibate.

“The very idea of 150 people who have decided they are not going to have any children, not going to have families, not going to be fathers and not going to be spouses – so they have no adult experience of family life as the rest of us know it – but they are going to advise the Pope on family life; it is completely bonkers,” she said.

Ahead of the synod, the Vatican sent questions on the family life and church teaching to bishops’ conferences.

In some dioceses, lay people were invited to submit their views.

Some bishops have made the feedback public.

Ms McAleese said her response was: “I’ve got a much simpler questionnaire and it’s only got one question.”

“How many of the men who will gather to advise you as pope on the family have ever changed a baby’s nappy? I regard that as a very, very serious question.”

She acknowledged the Pope has said he wants a new role for women in the Church.

But discussion of women priests is off the table, and other senior roles in the Vatican continue to be filled by men in a manner which lacks transparency, she said.

“You don’t need a new theology of women, you just need to end the old boys’ club,” she added.

While she hoped the October synod “will be a process of real introspection and debate”, she said she had not yet moved “from hope to expectation”.

Ms McAleese is living in Rome, where she is studying canon law.

Ireland’s Association of Catholic Priests said women should have a “huge involvement” in the synod.

Association spokesman Fr Sean McDonagh, SSC, said “it doesn’t make sense” for them to be excluded.

“I believe that women should have a huge involvement in all of these issues. These are moral issues about family and sexuality,” Fr McDonagh said.

Sources