PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

...And no wonder, for, even better than the eventual book, they captured in their elliptical, stream of consciousness style, the breadth of American Catholicism, including its striking contrasts: "The boys hawking Father Coughlin's Social Justice outside the churches...

...In concentrating on John Cogley's religious pilgrimage, I have scanted other, more secular elements in Ms memoir...

...I will always be grateful to it, mainly because I was among the millions who inherited the Gospel message from within its fold...

...The Episcopal congregations were notably sparser than those in the crowded neighboring Roman Catholic churches...

...Those quotes around autobiography are as much Cogley's as my own, for in a prefatory note he refers to the brevity of the memoir and the obvious lacunae it leaves in his life story, most notably the absence of a full treatment of his family...

...Cogley accepted the advice and maintained his position as a "Commonweal Catholic" for another 14 years...

...But most Catholics, journalists and others, proved more tolerant, if a bit puzzled...

...In the end, John Cogley decided that the Roman Catholic Church had become an unsupportable burden for him and that the Episcopal Church offered release-fewer claims, more tolerance and a rich liturgical and spiritual heritage...

...And it was, by his own claim, the journey between two churches that most deeply marked his life...

...In time his own anxious pilgrimage may be seen as a harbinger of that reunion...

...The Franciscans are singing with the kind of free-spirited sweetness that only Franciscans should be encouraged to indulge in, the sermon is excellent, and it seems that Paul Blanshard himself would see the Point were he here...

...Rein-hold who advised against the move on the grounds that "individual changes...

...1 heard nothing in the articulate sermons I listened to that even slightly offended my Catholic sense of theological propriety...

...Cogley devotes most of his "Reflections" to answering that question...

...Oddly enough, though, 1 found I could pray better in these half-empty temples of "heresy," and I felt more at home in them than I did in churches of my own communion...

...From everything his friends have told me and from the evidence of this "autobiography," it was a typical John Cogley performance, combining thoughtfulness, professionalism and style...

...The same candor that led him to discontinue his column in Catholic diocesan papers after the birth control encyclical prompted him to announce his move in a letter to the National Catholic Reporter and later, at the urging of the editor, in a short article on the New York Times Op Ed page...

...Moreover, his final illness sapped Cogley's strength and diminished the self-portrait he might otherwise have drawn...

...He read Newman, but found himself going, inexorably, in the opposite direction...

...Surprisingly, that goal was present very early on...

...John Cogley's decision, late in life, to join the Episcopal Church represented no sudden disillusionment with Roman Catholicism, nor was it a leap into the unknown...

...But it was the "Catholic connection-first of all with the Catholic Worker movement (the most vivid section of his book) and later as a religious editor, columnist and journalist-for which John Cogley is best remembered...

...They increase in frequency in the second half of the book as the pilgrim gets closer to Canterbury...

...But John Cogley did not study scholastic philosophy and theology for nothing: his title alerts us to the book's real matter and his subtitle neatly sums up the form...

...A Canterbury Tale 'Rabbi!'" Or this, among a series of vignettes on churches: "A particular Sunday, the Feast of Christ the King, at the Mission in Santa Barbara...

...Reading through the America sampler of Cogley's writing helped me fill out his own skeletal self-portrait...

...I attended these Episcopal churches surreptitiously, of course, but found the services rewarding and dignified...

...The motives that determine our religious attitudes and actions go deeper than any neat logical or even esthetic explanations...

...the ecumenical movement needed all the help it could get...

...His report on blacklisting, for example, and his contribution to the establishment of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and its Center Magazine take up considerable space in this book, as they did in his life...

...And even before the Council opened, he had discussed his desire to become an Episcopalian with the liturgist Fr...

...Those basic map points don't tell the whole story, however, since he also managed a lengthy stay in Rome during the Council and a two-year stint back in New York as religion editor for the Times...

...Characteristically, his final prayer was that both "will soon enter into full Christian communion...

...It was during the years of the Council that Cogley had his most sustained contact with America, but his contributions began much earlier, including an article in 1948 on his experiences at the Chicago Catholic Worker house, which he reproduces virtually in its entirety in chapter three of his memoir...

...The witty "poems on a postcard" that appeared in 1963-64 reveal him in an Ogden Nash mood, satiric but playfully so...

...Dissatisfaction with the post-Council pace of renewal played a part (he returned from Rome, he says, "enthusiastic about developments in the Roman Catholic Church"), but the arguments he marshals have a more intellectual and traditional ring to them: excessive claims for the papacy, Marian doctrines without a firm Scriptural base, continued reliance on scholastic terminology to "explain" the Eucharist...

...Spaced along this itinerary of "experiences," Cogley introduces a series of seven halts for "reflections...

...It was another decade before the book appeared (Catholic America, 1973), but the notes received an enthusiastic response from America's readers...

...Of course, I did not receive the Eucharist when the worshippers moved to the altar...

...While he was still writing for Commonweal, he would slip off on occasion to an Eiscopal church to escape from the anti-intellectual tone and the perfunctory manner of worship in his Catholic parish...

...and Bishop Sheil wiping away the spittle of a woman who contemptuously spat out While we were living in Brooklyn Heights I found it easy to attend Saint Anne's, an Episcopal church only a block from us, or historic Trinity Church on Wall Street, for some relief from the slap-dash liturgy at our local Roman Catholic parishes...

...His verse on the varieties of Jesuits has a little of both elements-and perhaps more prophecy than even he suspected: There are Jesuits left and Jesuits right A pro and a con for most any fight So wherever you stand, you stand not alone Every little movement has a Jebbie of its own So, too, his "Topic Sentences" for the Council: The ideas proscribed in an Indexed book Usually turn up in Life or Look Brethren separated only burn At invitations to "return" In a more sustained piece in 1962, Cogley outlined the book he wanted to write about American Catholicism...

...My only direct contact with him came, typically enough for both of us, during a deadline crisis for America's special Dorothy Day issue in 1972...

...8.95 I never met John Cogley, though he was no stranger to America House...

...no longer made sense...

...He plays down the significance of Humanae Vitae in his ultimate decision, but the turmoil it stirred up clearly propelled him toward Canterbury...

...He was repaid with one of Andrew Greeley's most vitriolic and ill-considered columns and a curt dismissal from Critic publisher Dan Herr...

...Nothing would have pleased him more...

...Cogley knew that for many liberal Catholics these were no longer pressing issues, but they bothered him, emphasizing a painful gap between profession and practice in his own life...

...The spirit behind those words gives added point to Cogley's tribute to the Catholic Church both in his dedication and in his Preface: "I have found my best friends and supporters in that communion...

...We needed an essay review of William Miller's A Harsh and Dreadful Love, and a call to the Center Magazine in Santa Barbara elicited an immediate yes and a promptly delivered, gracefully written appreciation of the book and of Miss Day...

...But his unease with Romish ways never left him, though the Vatican Council seemed to promise relief...

...Why, then, did he feel compelled to switch his allegiance...

...In 13 chapters he offers a chronological canter through his public life, from the Catholic Worker house in Chicago, to theological studies at the University of Fribourg, to Commonweal and the Fund for the Republic in New York, to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara...

...Reading A Canterbury Tale will help dispel some of that confusion, but not all...