The Rev. William H. Mullin has been thinking for years that one obvious solution to the shortage of Catholic priests is to ordain married men.
But this past Sunday, inspired by the Gospel of Luke, he went out on a limb, raising the issue from the pulpit, and giving out Cardinal Bernard F. Law's address with the suggestion that parishioners write the cardinal to share their thoughts.
''We're in big trouble, and we've got to start praying about this, asking for God's guidance, and advocating,'' Mullin, a priest at St. John the Baptist Church in Quincy, said yesterday in an interview. ''We've got to look at married men as a possible pool of candidates.''
In suggesting that the church look at ordaining married men, Mullin has injected himself into one of the more controversial issues in the Roman Catholic Church.
The issue of ordaining married men was debated for 1,000 years before the church made celibacy a requirement, and in recent years a number of lay people and a handful of church officials have spoken out in support of married priests.
But it is unusual for parish priests to speak out on the subject in a church that frowns on public disagreement.
Mullin said he decided to make his remarks after reading an open letter to US bishops in a recent edition of America magazine, a Catholic weekly, in which a group of priests outlines the increasing workload faced by priests today because of the clergy shortage.
The letter calls on the bishops to ''provide a forum to discuss changes in the requirements for ordination and to discover ways in which parish communities can call people to the priesthood, even without the requirement of celibacy.''
Mullin said he was also moved to speak by reflecting upon the week's reading from Luke, which says ''the harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few.''
''The reality is we have a shortage of priests, and we have to start talking about it,'' Mullin said. ''We've already had some priestless Sundays [in the region] and that's unfortunate, because the people deserve to have an opportunity to go to the Eucharist. Things are going to get worse until we start to do something different.''
The Archdiocese of Boston, however, was troubled by Mullin's remarks.
''He really should not be doing that,'' said the Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, director of the office for worship for the archdiocese.
Coyne said the suggestion that parishioners write to Law is ''not helpful.''
''It isn't going to change the teaching of the church just because Cardinal Law gets phone calls or e-mails, and it's not helpful to give them [parishioners] that kind of misleading understanding of how things would change or evolve,'' Coyne said. ''Even if Cardinal Law was considering something like that, which he's not, he would never have the authority to make a change like that. This is not going to change. It's not going to happen in the West.''
Coyne also said Mullin's remarks are ''distracting.''
''What we need is to recognize that there are a lot of good, fulfilled priests, not in spite of celibacy but because of the choice they've made,'' he said. ''The important thing is for us to restate over and over again the value of priesthood.''
Catholic priests in the West have been required to be celibate since the papacy of Gregory VII in the late 11th Century. Gregory settled a question that had been debated throughout the church's history, with advocates arguing that celibacy was a good way to prepare for the Kingdom of God, where there would be no marriage; was a way to witness total commitment to the church; and was a way of avoiding the potential problem of priests with children bequeathing church property to their heirs.
Although Western Catholic priests must be celibate, Eastern Rite Catholic Church, as well as Orthodox Christian churches, ordain married men. Even in the West, there are now married men ordained as deacons, and several dozen married men who had previously been ordained as Episcopal priests have been ordained as Catholic priests.
Although recent popes have strongly supported the ban on married priests, the requirement is not immutable doctrine, but is a disciplinary law of the church that could be changed, according to the Rev. John P. Beal, chairman of the canon law department at the Catholic University of America.
Today, Beal said, the main argument in favor of the ban on married priests ''is that not having a wife and family to care for leaves them free to devote their full time to the Lord and his people.''
''There has been no end of people who have suggested that the ordination of married men would help with the extreme shortage of priests, and it's discussed even by bishops,'' Beal said.
Most prominently, in 1998, Bishop Raymond Lucker of New Ulm, Minn., wrote a column in his diocesan newspaper endorsing married priests. And over the last several decades, substantial numbers of priests have left the priesthood to get married.
The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, editor of America magazine, said the issue ''is not going to go away.''
''For the first 1,000 years we had married clergy, for the second 1,000 we had celibate clergy, and for the third millennium could we go back to married clergy? Absolutely we could,'' he said. ''This pope has been very clear against ordaining married men, but it's church law. It could be changed.''
Mullin, who is the parochial vicar at the Quincy church, spoke about the issue twice on Sunday, at the 9 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. Masses. Only a handful of parishioners reacted, mostly positively. Some said they had heard Mullin speak about the issue before.
''Thirty years ago, I didn't think this was the tradition of the church, and I didn't think priests could handle all the duties and have a family,'' said Mary Beth Kabat, 65, a parishioner at St. John's. ''I'm older now, and I realize you can do it with the right support and attitude.''
Mullin, a 62-year-old priest who grew up clamming in Houghs Neck and is now serving in his eighth parish, said, ''I don't want to make noise, but this is not just my crazy idea. A lot of solid people have been talking about this.''
''When I was a kid, people who said, `Let's have Mass in English' were considered rebels, but now it's commonplace,'' he said. ''The handwriting is on the wall. Why can't we just act? We just get kind of bogged down with history and don't make changes very quickly.''