Former Irish president Mary McAleese said it best [commenting on a planned October (2014) synod in Rome on the family]: “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.”