Surely a daft idea?

There are big headlines today across the internet announcing that the Church may introduce the idea of married men being ordained, specifically for work in the deeply remote areas of the Amazon forest. Reports emphasise that some villages only see a priest once or twice a year, so any priest would have to be permanently on the move, and living in unusually difficult conditions.

Am I alone in thinking this an absolutely daft idea?

Surely the life of a travelling missionary deep in the Amazaon forests is ideally suited to a celibate, and absolutely the last job on eath to offer to a married man trying to raise a famiily?  Imagine - or perhaps the daft people who are offering this idea simply are incapable of imagining - a man struggling  to care for his wife and a bunch of  children,  facing  hunger, lack of everyday comforts, no settled home, inadquate supplies of everything from medical  supplies to sanitation, clothing and educational opportunities....the tough life of a missionary, Think of the children, hostages to an ecclesial whim, denied a proper home or education, or the normal networks of family and friends, as they travel from place to place so that their father can work in remote villages offering Mass and the sacraments?  Or...no...I suppose the plan is that some decent man in one small village is expected to leave his family for long periods, neglecting them for days, weeks, months at a time as other villagers  and relatives try to rally round to  cope with the usual and inevitable challenges and tragedies of daily life...childbirth and illness and  care for the infirm and elderly, and teaching the children and helping them train for work and for adult life...

Or perhaps the priest's family is to be specially favoured...extra help with family finances, funds and status for in-laws and other helpers, scholarships for the children at good schools and  a chance at university? With hard-working impoverished people in remote villages taxed to pay for this...

My guess is that the Amazon-ditch-celibacy plan is the dream of some ageing western clerics, seeking to change the Church's rich and valued pastoral practice to satisfy a conviction formed in about 1968 on no pastoral basis whatever.

Message to the Synod: drop this idea  immediately, and get on with some real pastoral planning.