Andrew M. Greeley

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Do Roman Cathol i cs KnOw? - Andrew M. Greeley, 1928-2013 -

Priest, Author, Scholar, ScoldAndrew M. Greeley, the Roman Catholic priest and writer whose outpouring of sociologicalresearch, contemporary theology, sexually frank novels and newspaper columns challengedreigning assumptions about American Catholicism, was found dead on Thursday morning at hishome in Chicago. He was 85.

Andrew Greeley talks about his novel involving a power struggle in the Vatican in July 1996.(Chris Walker, Chicago Tribune)

Father Greeleys books included at least 10 best -selling novels.

His niece Laura Durkin confirmed the death, saying he had died overnight in his sleep. She saidhe had been in poor health and under 24-hour care since suffering severe head injuries in 2008when his clothing caught on the door of a taxi as it pulled away and he was thrown to the

pavement.


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The Rev. Andrew M. Greeley Photo by Jonathan Kirn

In a time when the word maverick is often used indiscriminately, Father Greeley priest,scholar, preacher, social critic, storyteller and scold was the real thing. One could identify aleft and a right in American Catholicism, and then there was Father Greeley, occupying a zoneall his own.

Exuberantly combative, he could be scathing about the nations Roman Catholic bishops; at one point he described them as morally, intellectually and religiously bankrupt. If t he church

wanted to salvage American Catholicism, he wrote, it would be well advised to retire aconsiderable number of mitered birdbrains.

But he could be equally critical of secular intellectuals, whom he accused of being prejudicedagainst religion, and reform-minded Catholics, who he said had a weakness for political or

cultural fads.

He wrote more than 120 books, many published by university presses, and countless articlesabout Catholic theology in both sociological journals and general-interest magazines, oftenincorporating the latest scholarship. He wrote op-ed pieces and syndicated columns in bothreligious and secular publications.

His greatest readership certainly stemmed from his scores of novels, many of them rife withVatican intrigue, straying priests and explicit sex. At least 10 of them appeared on The NewYork Timess best -seller list, including his first, The Cardinal Sins (1981), a tale of two Irish -American boys from Chicagos West Side who enter the priesthood together, one of whomcontrives to become the cardinal of Chicago, takes a mistress and fathers a child.
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Sometimes I suspect that my obituary in The New York Times, Father Greeley once wrote,will read, Andrew Greeley, Priest; Wrote Steamy Novels.

Were they steamy? The question would probably not have even been raised if the author had not been a priest and if some of the steam had not been produced by fictional priests, in one case a

cardinal, breaking their vows.

In fact, most of the priests in his novels were virtuous, wise and hard-working. The big sexscenes were generally reserved for married couples rediscovering the redemptive healing of

passion after trials and estrangement.

I suppose I have an Irish weakness for words gone wild, Father Greeley once tol d The Times.Besides, if youre celibate, you have to do something.

No Use for Elites

Photo by Yvonne Hemsey/Getty Images

The books made him rich, though he gave his first million to charity and continued to give tovarious causes, including a donation, decades ago, to the Survivors Network of Those Abused byPriests, known as SNAP, then a fledgling advocacy group.

Father Greeley had been an early and vehement advocate for victims of abusive priests at leastsince 1989, when he began writing articles in Chicago newspapers demanding that the churchtake action against pedophile priests. The public criticism angered the archdiocese and manyfellow priests, but his outrage and proposals for reform were eventually recognized by CardinalJoseph Bernardin of Chicago, among others, as prescient.

Father Greeley was not shy about his politics, a New Deal liberalism grounded in an acute senseof family and neighborhood. (One of his recent books was titled with typical directness, AStupid, Unjust and Criminal War: Iraq 2001- 2007.) Nor did he hide h is devotion to hishometown Chicago Bears, Bulls and Cubs.
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He defended parochial schools, priestly celibacy, ethnic loyalties, Chicago politics and the vividimagery of traditional Catholic piety. He deplored negative attitudes toward sexuality in thechurch and assailed church leaders for paying little heed to the views of the laity. He identifiedthe controversy surrounding Humanae Vitae, the 1968 papal encyclical reasserting thechurchs condemnation of contraception, as a turning point for the church a time when

attendance at Mass dropped precipitously and Catholics began to question church authority on anever-growing list of topics.

If there was anything tying Father Greeleys torrent of printed words together, it was a respectfor what he considered the practical wisdom and religious experience of ordinary believers andan exasperation with elites, whether popes, bishops, church reformers, political radicals, secular academics or literary critics.

It was a thread that ran though his sociological research documenting the gap between whatCatholics thought about sex and marriage their more relaxed stance concerning artificial birthcontrol, for example and the more proscriptive positions of the church.

His work with the distinguished sociologist Peter H. Rossi in the early 1960s revealed thestrengths of parochial schools, then being viewed by secular educators as second-rate andauthoritarian and by liberal Catholics as a questionable use of church resources. The failure of many public schools soon provoked a fresh appreciation for the Catholic educational tradition.

In a 1972 book, Unsecular Man: The Persistence of Religion, Father Greeley marshaledevidence against the widespread intellectual assumption that religion was a fading force in theworld. Developments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the United States and the Middle Eastlater altered that perception too.

Religion, he argued, is the result of two incurable diseases from which humankind suffers life, from which we die, and hope, which hints that there might be more meaning to life than atermination in death.

Before religion became creed or catechism, he said, it was poetry: images and stories that defydeath with glimpses of hope, and with moments of life-renewing experience that were shared andenacted in communal rituals.

The theological voice wants doctrines, creeds and moral obligations, Father Greeley wrote. Ireject none of these. I merely insist that experiences which renew hope are prior to and richer than propos itional and ethical religion and provide the raw power for them.

This same concern for the religious experience of ordinary Catholics tied his sociological work to the fiction that he churned out with such energy. It was mostly about middle-class Irish-Americans from the same upwardly mobile milieu as the authors, with an occasional foray intoscience fiction and thrillers about Vatican skulduggery.


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He was criticized for never having had an unpublished thought or an unpublished fantasy,some added, faulting his fiction. Yet even his unpublished thoughts could cause trouble, as theydid in 1981.

Conspiracy Theory

Materials from the 1970s found in Father Greeleys papers by a young journalist working on anarticle about him led to accusations that Father Greeley had been plotting to write an expos of his nemesis, Cardinal John Cody of Chicago, that would have shown the prelate guilty of financial misconduct and paved the way for his ouster.

As part of the scheme, according to these allegations, Father Greeley wanted to see CardinalCody replaced by Cardinal Bernardin, then archbishop of Cincinnati, who, the thinking went, on

becoming a liberal member of the College of Cardinals would be inclined to vote for a reform-minded successor to Pope Paul VI upo n the popes death.

In fact, Cardinal Codys conduct had raised alarms in the Vatican beginning in the mid -1970sand eventually led to a criminal investigation in Illinois, halted only by the cardinals death in1982. And Archbishop Bernardin had long been considered the likely successor in Chicago. Thearchived materials, Father Greeley maintained, were speculative but reasonable scenariosdeveloped for a book on the papal election that would follow Pope Pauls death, which, as ithappened, occurred in 1978.

This business of conspiracy is ridiculous, Father Greeley said, adding, I didnt do it, but Iwish I had.

Though the furor blew over, it momentarily appeared to create an obstacle to Archbishop

Bernardins appointment to head the Chicago archdioc ese, and it severely strained relations between the archbishop and Father Greeley.

To be sure, Father Greeley had openly stated that battling Cardinal Cody was one of the chief crusades of his life. He was regularly and unsparingly critical of his leade rship. After thecardinal closed a number of inner- city schools, Father Greeley denounced him as a madcaptyrant.

Success and Setbacks

Andrew Moran Greeley was born on Feb. 5, 1928, in Oak Park, Ill., the son of Andrew T.

Greeley, a businessman, and the former Grace McNichols. His grandparents were Irishimmigrants. Besides his niece Ms. Durkin, he is survived by a sister, Mary Jule Durkin; four other nieces; two nephews; and 18 grandnieces and grandnephews.

From boyhood, Andrew Greeley wanted to become a priest. He attended Archbishop QuigleyPreparatory Seminary in Chicago and then went to St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein,Ill. He was ordained in 1952. For almost a decade he worked as assistant pastor of Christ the


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King Church in an affluent area of Chicago, writing his first books on young Catholics andchurch life in the suburbs.

In 1962 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago, adding it to earlier degrees in theology, and joined the staff of the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago,

serving as its senior study director until 1968. The group surveys American attitudes aboutreligious, cultural and other issues.

He never quite got over a string of setbacks. One was his failure to be granted tenure at theUniversity of Chicago in 1973, though he had taught there for a decade and been widely

published. He attributed the rejection at least in part to prejudice against a Catholic priest; otherssaid it had more to do with his cantankerous nature.

Another blow came when the American bishops repudiated a sociological study of Catholic priests that they had commissioned from him. A two-year project completed in 1972, the studyfound that American priests were widely dissatisfied with church leadership.

Then there was the resistance among liberal Catholics to his positive findings about Catholicschools. His research debunked the received view at the time that Catholics had low collegeattendance rates. He found instead that white Catholics earned bachelors degrees and pursuedadvanced degrees at higher rates than other whites, and he attributed their success to the qualityof education in parochial schools, a controversial assertion in a time of public-schoolascendancy.

Finally came the unwillingness first of Cardinal Cody and then Cardinal Bernardin to give him a parish of his own and appoint him its pastor.

Father Greeley later felt that he had readers everywhere and allies nowhere. Sensitive toaccusations that he was getting rich from peddling stories of Catholic failings in his novels, hegave large sums to charity, notably to aid Chicago Catholic schools that served minority

populations and to endow a chair in Roman Catholic studies at the University of Chicago, adouble-edged gesture to the university that had spurned him.

A Parish of Readers

The pugnacious style, sweeping generalizations and ad hominem attacks often found in hiswriting made him an alienating figure. Andy Greeley shoots from the hip at practicallyeveryone with whom he has some grievances, Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, a leading advocate

of improving relations between Judaism and the Catholic Church, complained to The Times in1976.

Fathers Greeleys chip -on-the-shoulder attitude may have stemmed from a belief that he had been misunderstood and marginalized. Indeed, a second vol ume of memoirs, Furthermore!, published in 1999, suggests a man who even while striving for serenity could never quite shed asense of being embattled and having scores to settle.


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This was particularly true when his fiction received poor reviews. He would never forget a badone and would continue to denounce the offending reviewer for decades.

It was easy for Father Greeley to dismiss critics of his novels as prudes, because some of themwere. Other critics, however, found the sex not prurient but preposterous. Some feminists

complained that it was too often brutal and his treatment of women condescending. The criticismstung Father Greeley, whose advocacy of womens advancement in the church had earned himfeminist defenders as well.

Father Greeley knew well that he was writing genre novels, but he, like many of his readers, sawthem as much more. They were theological parables and, for Father Greeley, somethingapproaching sacramental ministrations. If he did not have a parish, he had a mailbox and later an e-mail address. The faithful gathered there in huge numbers, thanking him for new insightsinto God and their church, adding their own tales of return and reconciliation.

For critics, the novels were merely publishing successes or even wasteful diversions from

sociological scholarship. For Father Greeley, they were the most priestly thing I have ever done.

And priesthood was what, in Father Greeleys eyes, held his life together.

I always wanted to be a priest, he once wrote. My core identit y is priest. I will always be a priest.

By PETER STEINFELS Published: May 30, 2013 / Daniel E. Slotnik and Richard Severo contributed reporting.
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Andrew M. Greeley