Father Greeley died May 29, at the age of 85. Four years ago he was getting out of a cab in Chicago, his topcoat caught in the door, he fell and hit his head. New reports said he survived the fall and subsequent surgery, but with some brain injury, from which he never really recovered.
My recollections of him are reading his books, scholarly articles, and newspaper columns, and gobbling the interviews he gave to other media.
I first encountered him in my freshman year of college seminary in the 1972 document commissioned by the American bishops, The Catholic Priest in the U.S.: Sociological Investigations. It was my first foray into the world of sociology, and it was fascinating to me, especially as I was discerning a vocation to be one of that group which Greeley and his companions researched. He got a couple of other books out of that research too. This led me to an earlier book, Uncertain Trumpet: The Priest in Modern America. Later works I gobbled up included The American Catholic: A Social Portrait, Religion: A Secular Theory, and Unsecular Man.
In Greeley's works I encountered that huge, and still debated, dichotomy of secular society vs. religious society. I was hard put to understand (at the time) his landing on the "secular" side of things. But I came to agree with his perspective. I still remember his very short definition of religion: "man's [sic] propensity to hope." But what he said about religion in general, and the Catholic Church in particular, resonated with me and my experiences, personal and ecclesial.
Greeley's unabashed embrace of the Second Vatican Council as a positive work of the Holy Spirit began to permeate my thinking. He welcomed the liturgy in the vernacular (while disparaging the liberal priests who wanted to throw out all the "religious symbolism" of vestment, ritual, and heritage). He advocated greater resources to preserve Catholic schools (when the religious women were leaving educational ministry in droves, and when the public school lobbies were ignoring the students' high test scores and off-the-charts college graduation rates). He made fun of the liberal social workers and advocates of liberation theology, while contending that Catholic education was far more effective in alleviating poverty. He made fun of the conservatives who thought the Catholic Church was going to hell in a very speedy handbasket. Greeley was neither left nor right, but -- ha!ha! -- in his own mind always right.
Through his friendship with Chicago philosopher and priest David Tracy, and his primary optic of "the analogical imagination," he produced The Catholic Myth. His critics said it was over the head of most Catholics. So he watered down the language (but not the theology) and produced The Great Mysteries: Experiencing Catholic Faith from the Inside Out. I still think these two books can contribute to any adult Catholic's understanding of the faith.
I drifted away from his sociology, but like so many others was taken up with his first novel to hit it big, The Cardinal Sins. I gobbled up many of his early novels, and later the Blackie Ryan mysteries. I can still remember one night while I was serving at St. Pius V Parish in McKeesport, going to bed with some Andrew Greeley novel (I read every night before I fall asleep). At 5:30 a.m. I finished it, listening to the birds stirring outside my window and seeing the first pre-dawn light. "Damn you, Andrew Greeley, you did it again! I lost another night's sleep to your stories!"
He was not much of a stylist, even pedantic and pedestrian in his language, but his plots of church life, steamy romances between husband and wife, unseemly affairs going on in the chanceries and Vatican, were imagination grabbers. These dozens and dozens of novels gave rise to the humorous insight that "Andrew Greeley has never had an unpublished thought--or sexual fantasy!"
When I read his autobiography, Confessions of a Parish Priest, what I had been thinking became clear to me. Just as a son who is continually put down by a verbally abusive father grows up to want to be the same father, Greeley the priest wanted desperately to be named a bishop, even though at every turn he did his best to point out all the stupidities, faults and sins of contemporary bishops (with the singular exception of Cardinal Joe Bernadin, his friend). Talk about a love-hate relationship.
It was the same way with his Irish heritage. He embraced it fully, but only from the American context. I have to admit that his excessive and continual emphasis on his Irish heritage left me cold. As the son of parents of Eastern European stock, I could not relate to "the troubles," the drinking, "lace curtain vs. pig-shit" Irish divisions, or the obvious historical fact of Irish domination of the American Catholic hierarchy for 150 years.
But in the end I admired Andrew Greeley for going his own way, using his energy, intelligence, and imagination to serve the church, this Chicago parish priest who was ordained the same year I was born, who loved the priesthood and loved priests.
May you rest in peace, Father Greeley, among all the angels and saints from Ireland and every other land in the very loving Mystery of God.
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