What do you think?
Everything You Wanted to Know About the Catholic Church But Were Too Pious to Ask
D.j. is nicked at head of spine and on top edge of front cover, heavily nicked and damaged on bottom edge of back cover near spine, d.j. is alo faded at spine, book is in excellent condition with only minor reading wear to fore-edge.
156 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1978
About the author
Andrew M. Greeley
379 books322 followersAndrew Greeley was a Roman Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist, and author of 50 best-selling novels and more than 100 works of nonfiction. For decades, Greeley entertained readers with such popular characters as the mystery-solving priest Blackie Ryan and the fey, amateur sleuth Nuala Anne McGrail. His books typically center on Irish-American Roman Catholics living or working in Chicago.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/andrew...
http://us.macmillan.com/author/andrew...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 2, 2019
Hilariously bad. Has to be a joke bad.
Greeley, a prolific Catholic priest, appears to take massive delight in being an enormous, ahistorical, smug jerk. He calls Rahner one of the greatest Thomists, casts doubt on the existence of both angels and demons, calls the old Mass a "museum piece" (and suggests we add Hebrew, Latin, and Greek responses to the Novus Ordo?), handwaves the scandal of intercommunion, cites a "Holy Office expert" who apparently encouraged homosexual Catholics to have a steady partner, as it was the lesser of two evils...you get the idea.
My personal favorite was the section on the inquisitions and Galileo, which goes exactly how you would expect. Most surprisingly, though, is his abhorrence that the inquisition's "basic assumption...was that faith is something that must be tenaciously defended and protected." Boggles the mind. He further concludes, "There is no point trying to apologize for the Galileo case. We were just wrong, that's all." A past reader pencilled notes throughout the book, and added, "Saint Galileo is still waiting for an apology." What planet am I on? Where am I?
I guess you could just say whatever you wanted in the 1970s, Catholic teaching be darned. Thanks for the laugh, Fr. Greeley!
Greeley, a prolific Catholic priest, appears to take massive delight in being an enormous, ahistorical, smug jerk. He calls Rahner one of the greatest Thomists, casts doubt on the existence of both angels and demons, calls the old Mass a "museum piece" (and suggests we add Hebrew, Latin, and Greek responses to the Novus Ordo?), handwaves the scandal of intercommunion, cites a "Holy Office expert" who apparently encouraged homosexual Catholics to have a steady partner, as it was the lesser of two evils...you get the idea.
My personal favorite was the section on the inquisitions and Galileo, which goes exactly how you would expect. Most surprisingly, though, is his abhorrence that the inquisition's "basic assumption...was that faith is something that must be tenaciously defended and protected." Boggles the mind. He further concludes, "There is no point trying to apologize for the Galileo case. We were just wrong, that's all." A past reader pencilled notes throughout the book, and added, "Saint Galileo is still waiting for an apology." What planet am I on? Where am I?
I guess you could just say whatever you wanted in the 1970s, Catholic teaching be darned. Thanks for the laugh, Fr. Greeley!
September 21, 2024
THE FAMOUS PRIEST/WRITER/NOVELIST CONSIDERS 100 TOPICS
Andrew M. Greeley (1928-1913) was an Irish-American Roman Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist and fiction writer, who also wrote many nonfiction books such as 'The Making of the Popes 1978: The Politics of Intrigue in the Vatican,' 'The Jesus Myth,' 'Priests: A Calling in Crisis,' etc.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1978 book, "The publishers have commissioned this book in the expectation that there are people in the world who still care about the 'Catholic position.' I'm not so sure. There was a time when Catholics looked to the church for answers on everything. Now many of them look to the church for answers to nothing...
"There was a time, of course, when we all believed that there was a Catholic position on almost every conceivable issue from the circumstances under which one could eat meat on Friday to higher education... in practice the official church has not been able to command agreement in many areas with its own stance, and has not taken action against those who disagree.
"There has always been, in other words, a pluralism of Catholic positions---some official, many tolerated, others marginal... In this volume ... I will describe the official position, so far as one can be ascertained, the belief and practice of ordinary Catholics, and the speculation of theologians. Sometimes I will express my own opinion, for what it's worth. Readers may decide for themselves..."
On abortion, he says, "Many Catholics, the present writer included, cannot understand how men and women of good faith and good will do not perceive that a three-months old embryo is indeed human and must be respected as human... Catholics should also realize that ... when the anti-abortion laws were written (mostly under Protestant auspices, be it noted), that such protection of life of the unborn was considered to be a notable and progressive advance for civilization... All the churches vigorously opposed abortion and infanticide during the worst of the nineteenth-century epidemic brought on by the population explosion of that time. Catholicism remains true to that liberal and civilized theme." (Pg. 15)
On Papal Infallibility, he comments, "I don't really want to get into this one. I told my good friend Hans Küng that he was making a mistake when he got into it... It is most unlikely that a solemn papal exercise in infallibility will ever occur again... There is no reason to choke ourselves on arguments which may have been appropriate for another time and place but not for today.
"Is the Church infallible? Sure it is. In what sense is it infallible? I think there are good answers to that question which will be accepted eventually as solid Catholic doctrine but which you can get into a h___ of a lot of trouble for stating now. I'm going to leave it to the theologians to work this one out... I don't think it's an issue worth fighting about." (Pg. 23)
On celibacy, he observes, "the people who have made the commitment to lives of generous and intense service in the community of the faithful do so in the name of an invisible but overpowering reality which dominates their lives. The presence of such a reality as reflected in the lives of committed celibates has an impressive and powerful effect on believers and unbelievers alike. It offends, affronts, scandalizes but also astonishes, fascinates, and disconcerts them. Anyone who doesn't think so has never hung around a secular university very long. Celibacy may very well become optional in the future in the Church; and that will be all to the good, because charismas that are imposed on people are no longer charismas... it still must be considered one of the treasures of Western Catholicism..." (Pg. 27-28)
He asserts, "Limbo has pretty much gone down the drain. It was a compromise dreamed up because St. Augustine, with reckless consistency, was willing to permit unbaptized infants to go to Hell... [but] it simply would not be just to confine to Hell, or even to deny a chance for Heaven, infants who were incapable of receiving baptism for one reason or another. Purgatory is a much more reasonable and consoling doctrine. It is a place where we can 'catch up' on the growing... we didn't get a chance to do on earth... to deny the existence of Hell means to ... reduce the choices we make during our lifetimes to irrelevancy. One can forget about the hellfire, the Sulphur, the Dantesque imagery; one must still acknowledge ... the possibility of loss, of self-chosen isolation... Whether such folk get another chance or not is something best left to the mercy of God." (Pg. 99)
He says, "The bible... contains the accounts of God's special words and deeds in dealing with the Jewish people down through the ages and with the early followers of Jesus of Nazareth. In the sense that the bible is ... accurate and faithful in its recording of God's deeds, God can surely be said to be its author... But God is not responsible for St. Matthew's Greek, St. Paul's grammar, for the Pentateuch tradition's notion of science and cosmology, or even for the early Christian's expectation for an imminent end of the world... It is far better for us to try to understand the implications of these symbols than to engage in arid, dry, and pointless debates about whether God was the author of the punctuation marks in St. John's text." (Pg. 105)
Greeley's somewhat "progressive" answers may offend some, but will perhaps appeal to larger numbers of modern Catholics.
Andrew M. Greeley (1928-1913) was an Irish-American Roman Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist and fiction writer, who also wrote many nonfiction books such as 'The Making of the Popes 1978: The Politics of Intrigue in the Vatican,' 'The Jesus Myth,' 'Priests: A Calling in Crisis,' etc.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1978 book, "The publishers have commissioned this book in the expectation that there are people in the world who still care about the 'Catholic position.' I'm not so sure. There was a time when Catholics looked to the church for answers on everything. Now many of them look to the church for answers to nothing...
"There was a time, of course, when we all believed that there was a Catholic position on almost every conceivable issue from the circumstances under which one could eat meat on Friday to higher education... in practice the official church has not been able to command agreement in many areas with its own stance, and has not taken action against those who disagree.
"There has always been, in other words, a pluralism of Catholic positions---some official, many tolerated, others marginal... In this volume ... I will describe the official position, so far as one can be ascertained, the belief and practice of ordinary Catholics, and the speculation of theologians. Sometimes I will express my own opinion, for what it's worth. Readers may decide for themselves..."
On abortion, he says, "Many Catholics, the present writer included, cannot understand how men and women of good faith and good will do not perceive that a three-months old embryo is indeed human and must be respected as human... Catholics should also realize that ... when the anti-abortion laws were written (mostly under Protestant auspices, be it noted), that such protection of life of the unborn was considered to be a notable and progressive advance for civilization... All the churches vigorously opposed abortion and infanticide during the worst of the nineteenth-century epidemic brought on by the population explosion of that time. Catholicism remains true to that liberal and civilized theme." (Pg. 15)
On Papal Infallibility, he comments, "I don't really want to get into this one. I told my good friend Hans Küng that he was making a mistake when he got into it... It is most unlikely that a solemn papal exercise in infallibility will ever occur again... There is no reason to choke ourselves on arguments which may have been appropriate for another time and place but not for today.
"Is the Church infallible? Sure it is. In what sense is it infallible? I think there are good answers to that question which will be accepted eventually as solid Catholic doctrine but which you can get into a h___ of a lot of trouble for stating now. I'm going to leave it to the theologians to work this one out... I don't think it's an issue worth fighting about." (Pg. 23)
On celibacy, he observes, "the people who have made the commitment to lives of generous and intense service in the community of the faithful do so in the name of an invisible but overpowering reality which dominates their lives. The presence of such a reality as reflected in the lives of committed celibates has an impressive and powerful effect on believers and unbelievers alike. It offends, affronts, scandalizes but also astonishes, fascinates, and disconcerts them. Anyone who doesn't think so has never hung around a secular university very long. Celibacy may very well become optional in the future in the Church; and that will be all to the good, because charismas that are imposed on people are no longer charismas... it still must be considered one of the treasures of Western Catholicism..." (Pg. 27-28)
He asserts, "Limbo has pretty much gone down the drain. It was a compromise dreamed up because St. Augustine, with reckless consistency, was willing to permit unbaptized infants to go to Hell... [but] it simply would not be just to confine to Hell, or even to deny a chance for Heaven, infants who were incapable of receiving baptism for one reason or another. Purgatory is a much more reasonable and consoling doctrine. It is a place where we can 'catch up' on the growing... we didn't get a chance to do on earth... to deny the existence of Hell means to ... reduce the choices we make during our lifetimes to irrelevancy. One can forget about the hellfire, the Sulphur, the Dantesque imagery; one must still acknowledge ... the possibility of loss, of self-chosen isolation... Whether such folk get another chance or not is something best left to the mercy of God." (Pg. 99)
He says, "The bible... contains the accounts of God's special words and deeds in dealing with the Jewish people down through the ages and with the early followers of Jesus of Nazareth. In the sense that the bible is ... accurate and faithful in its recording of God's deeds, God can surely be said to be its author... But God is not responsible for St. Matthew's Greek, St. Paul's grammar, for the Pentateuch tradition's notion of science and cosmology, or even for the early Christian's expectation for an imminent end of the world... It is far better for us to try to understand the implications of these symbols than to engage in arid, dry, and pointless debates about whether God was the author of the punctuation marks in St. John's text." (Pg. 105)
Greeley's somewhat "progressive" answers may offend some, but will perhaps appeal to larger numbers of modern Catholics.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews