Greeley, Andrew (1928—)

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Greeley, Andrew (1928—)

A self-described "faintly comic Celtic Lancelot" and "perennial dissident priest," Catholic priest, sociologist, and writer Andrew Greeley has stirred frequent controversy within and outside the Church and produced enormous amounts of written work in widely different fields. Beginning late in the 1950s and continuing at a relentless pace thereafter, the water-skiing, celibate priest published countless articles in newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals, as well as more than 100 books. These range from obscure sociological tracts on religion and ethnicity in the United States to racy bestselling novels filled with sex and corruption, as well as works on relationships, photography, and mysteries. If a central theme ties his work together, it may be his possibly quixotic crusade to "free the riches of the Catholic tradition from the stranglehold of a decrepit and corrupt bureaucracy" and to bring a sense of "God's merciful love" to readers.

A lifelong resident of Chicago, Greeley has been a professor at both the University of Chicago and at the University of Arizona and a longtime researcher at Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. He has become embroiled in numerous controversies, offending persons of all political stripes. His advocacy of liberalization of Church policies on birth control, divorce, and women in the priest-hood has angered a conservative Catholic hierarchy, while his opposition to abortion and support of priestly celibacy has offended many liberals. Despite his success as a writer of bestselling novels, he claims his primary occupation as a parish priest and cites his popular books as his most successful outreach.

As a youth Greeley attended Catholic schools and admired the works of G. K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, and other Catholic writers. He decided he wanted to be a priest in second grade and was ordained in 1954. While serving as an assistant pastor in Chicago, he began writing articles for religious publications under a pseudonym and later under his own name. His first book, The Church and the Suburbs (1959), grew out of two of his articles that examined the effects of increased affluence on religious belief. In 1962 he earned a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago. His sociological work, often based on surveys generated at NORC, has included studies of Catholic education, the priesthood, the paranormal, ethnicity and alcoholism, and Irish Americans, among other things. Religious works like The Mary Myth (1977) suggest the "womanliness of God," a recurrent theme in Greeley's nonfiction and fiction. Books like The Unsecular Man (1972) make a case for the persistence of religious belief in a supposedly secular age.

One of Greeley's main offenses against conventional Catholic doctrine has been to suggest that sex is a sacrament and an expression of God's love rather than a sin when it is not a means of procreation. His outspokenness on this and other issues brought him into conflict with leading church authorities, including John Cardinal Cody of Chicago. Greeley's most critically-acclaimed work of popular non-fiction, The Making of the Popes, 1978: The Politics of Intrigue in the Vatican (1979), examines papal politics in Rome in the style of Theodore White, deglamourizing, demystifying, and exposing the papal selection process as an unfair practice in which popes are chosen secretly, undemocratically, and often ineptly. Although the book sold only moderately well, it earned plaudits for its close observation, detailed reporting (much of it thanks to a source Greeley termed "Deep Purple"), and analysis of a rite that has remained shrouded in secrecy for centuries.

In the mid-1970s, convinced that the power of storytelling and emotion rather than dry exposition and philosophy were key to religious belief, Greeley began writing poetry and fiction. His first two novels sold poorly, but his third, The Cardinal Sins (1981), made him an overnight celebrity. The story of two boyhood friends, one who goes on to become a simple parish priest and the other who becomes a cardinal, is laced with sex and corruption. It remained on bestseller lists for more than a year, selling more than three million copies. Greeley followed with dozens of other novels, many of them bestsellers that often included sex, corruption, and violence, set in Chicago, and featuring religious or mystical characters. Like The Cardinal Sins, many were better received by the public than by reviewers, who often have complained that Greeley's writing is stiff and his characters two-dimensional. Catholic officials (many of whom, Greeley claimed, never read the books) often criticized the novels for their sex scenes, although Greeley has defended his depiction of sex as tasteful and claimed his own surveys show that his books brought a majority of Catholic readers closer to the Church. He described his novels as "comedies of grace"—parables of God's grace through love—and "the most effective priestly activity in which I have ever engaged," and blamed the anger of his priestly critics on their envy of the wealth and fame his books brought him. Though he has owned expensive houses and cars, he claims he has given away most of his earnings to charity.

Reaching his 70th birthday in 1998, Greeley, who has attributed his productivity to celibacy and long hours at the computer terminal, allowed that he would slow down his pace. But the previous decade had brought little evidence of declining energy. He produced more than a score of books of nonfiction and fiction. Although the latter earned many unfavorable reviews, they continued to receive an enthusiastic reception from loyal fans. According to Greeley, readers who write him often tell him that his stories have had "an enormous effect on their personal and religious lives, giving them new hope and a new (or renewed) sense of God's forgiving love." Among his later works were mysteries somewhat reminiscent of Chesterton's Father Brown series that feature the adventures of Father Blackwood Ryan, monsignor, who represents the best attributes of Catholic priests: "intelligence, pragmatism, zeal, wisdom, and wit," rather than the selfishness and insensitivity of other priests portrayed in the books. Greeley also continued to write popular books on relationships, including Sexual Intimacy: Love and Play (1988) and Faithful Attraction: Discovering Intimacy, Love, and Fidelity in American Marriage (1991).

—Daniel Lindley