UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Phyllis Zagano | Oct. 7, 2015 Just Catholic
Early church fathers preferred asceticism but figured out that without marriage and children the church would not last long. They wrote that married households are the basis of Christian community.
Skip ahead several centuries and they are at it again. A room full of celibate men talking about marriage.
Oh, they’ve let a few other folks into the back rows: 17 married couples and some others. They even have three women religious (one each from Malta, Costa Rica, and the U.S.) representing the International Union of Superiors General.
The bottom line: it’s all-male, all the time, and 99.6% clerical. Of the 279 voting members of the Synod of Bishops on the Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and the Contemporary World, there is one brother — the superior general of the Little Brothers of Jesus, the lay group inspired by Charles de Foucauld to live simple lives among the people. There are nine other men religious — heads of Benedictine, Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit and Redemptorist orders and others — and a reasonable number of the synod fathers are religious priests. But, aside from the religious men’s experiences of communal living, the voting members’ family life ended when they left Mom and Dad for the seminary, some at the age of 14.
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