Frustrated by the Vatican’s refusal to connect celibacy and the priest shortage, he sent Rome the draft of a pastoral letter proposing, in the absence of other suitable candidates, to present married men to Rome as candidates for ordination. He had to agree when the Vatican secretary of state called this a “sort of provocation.”
Meaning had to agree now, not at the time or in the intervening eighteen years. His April 24, 1991 letter to Cardinal Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State, denying what he now admits, is in Paul Wilkes The Education of an Archbishop (1992), pp. 145-147.
We are reminded of the politician from Pogo, the "back-and-forthright" candidate.
ReplyDeleteWeakland's whole life is a "provocation!"
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