What would you call a female priest?

I love the Catholic Church, but sometimes (as happens in a lot of families), I despair!

I have been watching the "Synod of Bishops on the Family" discussions in Rome, and despite the best efforts of our best people, the Synod is being sidetracked too often. For an interested outsider like me, the idea is simple: the family is where we learn to love and forgive. That's it. The job of the Synod is therefore to find ways to help and support each family to love and forgive.

Instead, we are sidetracked into complicated mazes like whether divorced and re-married Catholics can receive communion. (My question - for what it's worth - would Jesus cut off support to people at the very time in their lives when they are feeling lost and vulnerable? Would Jesus cast people away when they made a mistake - assuming there might have been a mistake?)

Another sidetrack in the maze: homosexual parents. Would Jesus judge them on their sexual orientation or the quality of their love? the quality of the love they bring to their family? their ability to help children learn to love and to forgive?

And, again, the role of women in the Church! To me it is hugely ironic that the leaders of our parish families - yes our parishes are modelled on the family - are all male. We call them "Father".

In the early Church some of the holiest people went into the deserts of Egypt to be more alone with God.

The word that has come down to us when they were addressed is "Abba" (father). But there were women there too. They were called "Amma" (mother). These people were our mothers and fathers in the faith.

The family is precious to the Church partly because it is a model for the Trinity: three making a single unity. The Holy Family (Joseph, Mary, Jesus) is our model for the family. And yet we insist on male-only headship for our parish family. That worked well enough even as recently as the nineteenth century when the Roman/Victorian concept of paterfamilias was accepted without much question.

Society has moved on. The Church has moved on in so many other ways. The world is changing. Rapidly! Spirituality is changing in a huge way. God is no longer seen as male (or female). The Church will change on this - but sadly not in my lifetime. Even this synod is a "Synod of Bishops on the Family" - with a few family people as "auditors" (listeners, who can only speak when spoken to).

The lack of balance is part of the problem. No-one would consider saying that the bishops are not bright or educated, nor say that they are unconnected to their flocks - but their experience of day-to-day family life is up to half a century old. AND they are trained male academics, and too many too often argue from the head rather than the heart.

So pray for the Synod.
Pray that they stick to their knitting.
Pray that their focus stays on love and forgiveness.
And pray that the teachings to come out of the Synod will support all our families as they form the adults of the future to be more loving and more forgiving people.