Vatican Rejects Proposal to Ordain Married Men : Catholicism: The outspoken archbishop of Milwaukee discloses rebuke of his suggestion for a solution to the shortage of priests. Some wonder whether the church will attempt to silence him as it has other dissenters.

The Vatican has rejected a proposal that married men be ordained as Catholic priests, warning the archbishop who made the suggestion that it was “out of place.”

Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, the first American bishop to openly urge the church to consider married clergy, disclosed the rebuke in the final draft of a 30-page pastoral letter that was published Wednesday in the Catholic Herald, the archdiocesan newspaper.

Rome’s rejection of the proposal was expected. Although the possibility of married priests as one answer to the growing shortage of clergy is often discussed privately among bishops, Pope John Paul II is adamantly opposed to changing the rule.

Weakland is one of few Catholic bishops to make public Vatican disapproval of his actions, leading many observers to wonder whether church officials will attempt to silence him as they have other dissenters.

Previously, a directive from the Vatican stopped a Swiss university from granting Weakland an honorary degree. The controversy made international headlines after Weakland himself disclosed the Vatican’s intervention.

The university had chosen Weakland for the honor because of a position paper he wrote on abortion. Weakland described the church’s ban on abortion as “too simplistic an answer to a complicated and emotional problem.”

His proposal that the celibacy rule be revised also attracted wide attention last January when he released the first draft of his pastoral letter urging the change.

In the final draft of his pastoral statement, Weakland said that he had received a letter from a Vatican official, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, now retired, regarding the earlier draft.

“I was informed by the Vatican secretariat of state that my suggestion of proposing a married man was regarded as ‘out of place,’ ” Weakland wrote.

Weakland dropped the proposal to abolish the celibacy requirement in the final version of his pastoral letter, but he noted that married priests and female priests are often cited as solutions to the shortage of clergy.

In his earlier draft, he had said he regarded seeking Vatican permission to ordain married men as a necessary step, even if the appeal should fail.

According to Weakland, Casaroli informed him that the Pope was preparing directives related to the priest shortage. The pontiff has said that the matter of ordaining women is not open for debate.

In the final version of his pastoral letter, Weakland also addressed other issues related to the need for the Catholic laity to assume many day-to-day responsibilities of priests. The role of the parish priest should become more like that of a bishop--one who oversees many administrative duties that are performed by others, he said.

“In this way, we will be returning to the concept of priesthood in the early church,” Weakland wrote.

He also made several recommendations regarding the role of a priest, urging that they be implemented in a decade or two. For example, he recommended that priests should celebrate no more than three Masses a weekend, with other services assigned to lay preachers.

He also suggested broader roles for laity, including the appointment of “pastoral directors” for parishes without resident priests.

Weakland said that within a year he will name lay pastoral directors to administer some parishes in the Milwaukee area.

In the letter, Weakland also rejected some solutions that have been proposed to cope with the shrinking numbers of priests.

For example, he described as theologically unsound and a departure from Catholic tradition the practice of allowing members of the laity to lead services and distribute Communion wafers consecrated earlier by a priest. Some dioceses have adopted those practices.