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GREELEY, ANDREW MORAN 1928-

ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST; SOCIOLOGIST;
AUTHOR

Education and Writings

Andrew Moran Greeley was born in Chicago and educated in Catholic schools and Mundelein College. He was ordained in 1954 and assigned to a prosperous suburban Chicago parish, an experience that became the basis for his The Church and the Suburbs (1959). He was permitted to do graduate work at the University of Chicago and completed his Ph.D. in 1961, a study that led to The Education of American Catholics (1966), which attracted attention with evidence that American Catholics were becoming the best educated of American ethnic groups.

Sociological Studies

After his degree Greeley affiliated with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), focusing on analyzing the social implications of religion and ethnicity. In 1965 he was released from parish duties and permitted to devote himself to academic and scholarly work. In 1970 the Ford Foundation funded the Center for the Study of American Pluralism, associated with the NORC, which became the base of his scholarly work in sociology.

Theories Attract Attention

Greeley's work attracted increasing attention in the 1970s, particularly his study of Catholic Schools in a Declining Church (1976), which asserted that parochial education was one of the most effective means of developing loyalty to the church, this at a time when bishops were slowing their commitment to building more schools. More sensational was the revelation in his research that the reason for the decline in recent Catholic commitment was not bewilderment by the rush of change that followed the Second VaticanCouncil but the refusal of the American laity to accept the church's teachings of sexuality and birth control, as stated in Humanae Vita (1968). His studies said that only 15 percent of American Catholics accepted the rule against artificial birth control, a sharp drop for the more than half who accepted the church's teachings in this area in 1963. Paralleling this drop in acceptance of teachings on sexuality was a drop in the acceptance of papal authority and a decline in Catholic practices. The impact of Humanae Vita was also evident in the clergy, where 80 percent of the priests would not enforce the strictures against birth control. Time magazine paid particular notice to his work. These conclusions were confirmed in American Catholics: A Social Portrait (1977).

Controversial Claims

Greeley then turned his attention to the use and effect of symbols in religion, paying attention to the Virgin in a study, The Mary Myth: On the Femininity of God (1977). That with his reports on church politics of the election of Pope John Paul II made him one of the most famous and controversial Catholic writers. In 1990 he took a professorship at the University of Arizona, where he would spend half his years teaching and in parish work.

Popular Fiction

At the end of the 1970s Greeley turned to expressing his views in poetry and fiction. He published two modestly successful novels before the end of the decade and before reaching the vast readership he attained with his fiction in the 1980s, when novels like Cardinal Sins (1981) sold millions of copies and attracted a band of devoted readers and admirers. Greeley felt that his fiction was a more effective way to communicate his ideas than the scholarly works he had written earlier and turned his efforts increasingly to more creative forms of writing.