Confessions of a Parish Priest:
Deedy, John
guish his short stories, in the character of and irrationality of desire. Leavitt in- what it is he must love, and loves Rose. tends the image to...
...success...
...Condurability than critics would concede), Parish Priest fessions of a Parish Priest is but volume but rather that people read them no'w...
...Opinionated, combative, old, with nothing to look back on John Doody exasperating, outrageous, then warm, but a chain of wrong decisions, charming, generous, persuasive, Ancarefully made...
...Which Rose loses everything she knows...
...24 October 1986: 561...
...C OoLOR him anything, but don't color drew Greeley is a man uneasy to peg, and Owen's confession forces Rose to realize him boring - Andrew Greeley, that of course impossible to ignore...
...The language pen, and word processor, and if they his autobiography is concerned is that the can be expressed only in the naturalness sometimes seem hurried and ill- Greeley of historical importance is not Commonweal: 560 likely to be the Greeley of autobiographi- of compiling a sociological portrait of same kind of talent, not explicitly at any cal preoccupation...
...Cannot the novels be want to use the memoir as an occasion to storyteller, the Greeley who in mid-life their own statement, in the manner of get even...
...point in the face of Greeley's enormous hood, a "Priest Corps," not unlike Even Bernardin gets his lumps...
...We are chosen by our who we are...
...There are things I could tell you...
...Bereft of human contact, the (Senator Pat Moynihan - the familiarity weekend parish work...
...moved in imitation of them...
...everything to be known, Owen and writes: She understands how those we love bePhilip invade Rose's sense that the nec- How wondrous, how grand those come part of us...
...The syndi- Greeley himself...
...If his book is self-serving, what kind of husband and father in the would counter that he really doesn't care autobiography isn't...
...Catholicism to take seriously a science it is reason to regret that the autobiography As the central motif to his novel, had once disdained...
...the window becomes a mirror...
...His novels are is not indexed...
...can dispense himself from Greeley's future will be revisiting Greeley's The crane-child is a parable of the way technical works...
...desire in the same way the child chose the His novel attempts to give voice to the Things I've never told a living soul...
...imagine, for instance, that envy perpowerful on their own turf, as when he This, it would seem, is a man with meates the clerical culture as thoroughly went to Rome to tell the pope-makers much to prove - to himself, no doubt as is maintained...
...The the priestly ministry, he may go forth That's not Andrew Greeley's case...
...ites...
...And as a one-time how they should be making popes...
...The important Greeley is respondents of Ascent into Hell reported stokes up smoldering animosities, of the person who functioned as scholarly the novel made them think seriously which there are many, including his technician for a changing church, who about religious problems, and almost Commonweal one...
...Mostly, though, the unnamed reached out for a larger audience with those of others who have dealt in sin and are secondary figures in the autobiogwhat he calls "stories of God, comedies redemption, failures and new beginnings raphy...
...The paradox so far as to anyone else but the boy...
...parish priest, though his parish, to borbe exactly the case, but it is not to say that Can we not create an environment in row from writer Mark Harris, is largely there won't be another blockbuster like which, after someone has fulfilled a his mailbox these days...
...There is a ton of informaLeavitt reimagines the case study of the flawed, indeed flayed by some critics, tion in the book, and the book is a hefty crane-child, a boy abandoned by his but they're devoured by millions who ask one...
...Many people The Cardinal Sins, some three million commitment of five or ten years to write autobiographies who needn't have...
...Now that Owen has spoken, If nothing more, , he forced American cardinal-archbishop of Chicago...
...tends the image to imply the common it...
...For but the echoes of the more subtle lanOwen's homosexuality because she each, in his own way . . . finds guage of love that Rose attempts to reknows that this one, irrevocable revela- trieve from their lives...
...But then old friends are studies, so will researchers be studying the imagination seizes upon an object to often given to hyperbole...
...Grievances are deep, -broached intriguing ideas like a limited- two-thirds said the book caused them to and some may be self-indulgent...
...But that his novels are where Bernardin's recollection of the all he claims for them, including a facts differed from his...
...In their arrogance of wanting In describing the crane-child, Leavitt mirrors most perfectly the crane-child...
...The sound of the cranes was the they're so imbued with sociology that he This is too bad, for as scholars of the only language he could speak...
...There's more to come...
...When Philip announces his homosex- truth that homosexuality is no different whatever it is that we love, that is uality to his parents, Rose replies: from its opposite...
...cordingly, is precisely what one would like an undertow, then cease, leav- expect a Greeley autobiography to be: ing her stranded, fifty-two years vintage stuff...
...His is problem is, obviously, that best-seller with dignity and honor and gratitude a life and self-view which should be on status and quality are not necessarily - still a priest but not in the active the record, if only for the narrower deministry save in times of emergency...
...Greeley's sociology might be cold and or not, he is one of the large figures of our twenty years...
...copies of which went to market...
...No shrinking violet, Andrew...
...Greeley Would not such a man be a special icism...
...as in other places, Greeley does The autobiography's preoccupation, compiling, extrapolating, interpreting all not name names, explaining he doesn't on the other hand, is with Greeley the that necessary...
...I cranes...
...That hasn't turned out to Chicago, from cholera epidemics...
...But are the surveying, Here...
...The (that his novels are, in fact, catechetical Commonweal editor, who was around present system is dismissed as "chaotic instruments), to the overseers of Catholic more than eleven years, it needs to be and irresponsible," despite being able to morals and mores (that the sexual proved to me that one of us used to feed produce occasional "happy flukes" like metaphor of his stories is sacramental, "anonymous," "nasty" , anti-Greeley a Roncalli and a Luciani, Greeley favor- not salacious or denigrating), to who quotes to the New York Times...
...What is finally haunting essary progress of life is built upon ac- cranes must have seemed...
...Jacqueline Susann nominational world of Roman Catholwas on best-seller lists too...
...She pared to the small and clumsy crea- not the sexual frenzy of father and son, denies as long as possible the clues to tures who surrounded him...
...lent...
...come in post-Cody Chicago even for tion site...
...There will be their particular magic is incommunicable nonfiction still flow steadily from mind, no escaping him...
...If it tells us more world because of his years of service whether his novels are immortal (though about Andrew Greeley than we could in the priesthood...
...The important Greeley is the Greeley percent Catholic, 75 percent women, When Greeley becomes subjectively of those numerous studies on Catholic etc...
...Andrew Greeley is no one's fool - fact she was making the first and AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY and, again, no one's bore...
...whom he has tilted lances, like the late his fear...
...readers of his novels (average age 39, 65 rate...
...Yet it is Rose, not Owen or Philip, who revealed...
...The screeches of the crane-child cated columns have been discontinued, they're probing American Catholicism of signify a lost language to Leavitt because but articles, commentaries, and books of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s...
...thing's a secret, it therefore has to be love...
...though, in fairness, not claiming the tract...
...Answer: The new child identified only with the cranes out- is on that level - is cited as saying the cardinal-archbishop's precondition that side hiss window...
...largest of a series of mistakes that Confessions of a Parish Priest, acAndrew M. Greeley would carry her out into her life Simon and Schuster, $18.95, 507 pp...
...That's It is characteristic of the sociologist in Greeley's word, and what Greeley says, him that Greeley would go to the trouble Greeley means...
...My own solution to the celibacy Greeley made this accommodation is clot Admittedly, it is difficult to argue the problem is a limited-term priest- to suggest that he pulls any punches...
...Greeley prizes the title best-seller lists...
...parts of one coin...
...education, on the priesthood, on ethnic- sex scenes (overwhelmingly positive) Otherwise he is fascinating, as he whisks ity, on the sociology of religion in vari- and the effect of the novels on their reli- readers through old skirmishes, relives ous contexts, on the American Catholic gious lives...
...In the not too dis- In sum, Greeley's is a candid look at the novels sold in the space of four years, tant past, to be a priest forever his church, its leaders, his colleagues, and new titles were being announced meant to be a priest for ten years, himself in his several roles - as indiwith such regularity that it seemed his because, on the average, priests vidualist, sociologist, professor, storyname would be anchored forever on died at about 35 (in 19th-century teller, priest...
...com- about The Lost Language of Cranes is ceding to some necessary illusions...
...and gather data on reactions to his sociological, he begins to lose audience...
...Like him that she has misunderstood the past is...
...Some twelve million copies of the Peace Corps...
...But to say that catechetical force, is another question...
...he suspects their "overarching sociolog- possibly want to know, well brace your- Andrew Greeley ical framework" may give them more Confessions of a selves...
...knows who else...
...though him into account long after it has forgotany belief in the redemptive power of its methodology and interpretation have ten many of more exalted rank with love, but because he needed a cover for been contested, new insights were there...
...Why is Greeley the priest not welmother in an apartment near a construc- of a story that it be foremost a good read...
...He even let Cardinal Bernardin see Well, Greeley found that larger audi- certain pages, and deleted passages ence, to be sure...
...When he whispered, wearying (it's the nature of the science, place and time, and history will be taking "Save me," in their youth, it was not for really), but it braved new ground...
...They will have to if love...
...And when church," and Ken Prewitt of the Social But there's no index to steer one quickly he was out of their sight, he became si- Science Research Council as saying to that detail or to other data...
...one of his autobiography...
...Each is part of the mysterious lost languages that inexorably pull Owen don't believe that just because some- coming-together that is the nature of and Philip towards the men they love...
...Principals are named, and alof grace, parables of divine love" in - Greene, Waugh, Mauriac, Bernanos though judgments are often very harsh, which the "sacramentality of human - whose shades Greeley invokes, al- Greeley's is not a vindictive or libelous sexuality" is a major theme...
...I can't term priesthood, who bearded the most have greater respect for the priesthood...
...Seventy percent of reader triumphs and disappointments, and as social entity...
...tion will subvert the entire structure of her past: Now it seemed to her ironic that Andrew Greeley, this is my life ! she should have seen in Owen's face assurance, a sign that she was CONFESSIONS OF A tempered, they're invariably challengmaking the right decision, when in PARISU PRIEST ing...
...He screeched and novels are "bringing millions back to the he stop writing novels with sex in them...
...Leavitt in- what it is he must love, and loves Rose...
Vol. 113 • October 1986 • No. 18
