The Catholic Imagination
Greeley, Andrew M.
their way with men-and in a discus- still, the very existence of Breege and Bu- it introduces is thrilling and clean. sion in the village hair salon that reads gler's love gives us...
...Although Greeley acknowl- liness had split down the spine, and I hold him-perhaps all at once like a edges that some people are "attracted wanted another just like it...
...In simple, but profound language far from the campus of the University it breaks open for us the paradox and shows the way to a of Arizona, where Greeley spends part new style of leadership we have been searching for...
...Bugler wants his farm, look at a river...
...Christian Yoga...
...there...
...January 28...
...simply trade one whole identity for an- some narrow shelves in the back be- The priest, after the appropriate season other but bring significant elements of tween the literary criticism and the psy- of doubt, moved on...
...The hope ford, Connecticut...
...of each year teaching sociology...
...Ko1n "is not exactly Chicago as seen from the Shedd Aquar- cowley@cowleyorg • www.cowley.org ium (what is...
...The central walking home from work, I A priest had lost his faith...
...Grounded in gospel values, church of San Xavier del Bac near Tuc- written in clear and profoundly challenging son, Greeley discerns "the same stories words, Servanthood uncovers the meaning of of a God who is deeply involved with Servant Leadership for the Church and the his creation...
...My parents, who were born in the same year Barth in English and in German...
...Working from two "representative headlong absence of reason he saw their ndrew Greeley has been writ- samples" of married Americans, for exlives return to normal, the pattern of the ing on the "Catholic imagi- ample, Greeley is prepared to demonsteady days as they had once been...
...O Breege can't abandon either Joseph or emptiness, a deep amethyst-colored, her love for Bugler, facing violence on plashing river, clean and icy cold...
...The Dorothy Day book wasn't That priest could have been the pronity of faith...
...Greelcy The Catholic Imagination provides a good her new foal: "When he saw them so introduction to Greeley's unique modus close together, his heart froze with a operandi, blending stories, survey data, kind of agony at how outside everyone and a few memorable assertions guarand everything he felt, an outcast in the anteed to provoke double and triple takes world save for Breege, and he knew that among those unfamiliar with the style of by telling her that single shred of truth James T. Fisher this priest, sociologist, and popular novshe would not desert him, and then in a elist...
...Filmmaking is no uating this "gray Gothic pile" (building prominently in church teachings...
...statistical analyses of Catholic attitudes Greeley is less concerned here with con- Greeley's forays into Catholic visual on a wide range of topics...
...A nation" since the 1970s, but strate not only that Catholics "enjoy" sex This ultimately murderous man just this motif was also implicit more than others...
...America: The Lives American Catholics (see sociologist The irony is that Greeley's highly con- of Thomas A. Dooley: 1927-61 (University James Davidson's letter in Commonweal, tentious standing in a fragmented of Massachusetts...
...exceptions, display an unselfconscious Clearly somebody had sold off a familiarity with the idioms of both evan- whole library, had brought in books that gelical piety and the gospel of personal had been bought with care over the fulfillment...
...He suggests that such fiction (especially that of James T. Farascribed to Protestants, who purportedly erotically charged works as Gianni Dagli rell) that treat issues of "community" imagine a distant God-as-sovereign and Orti's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa and Carlo from a Catholic perspective...
...Taken artists of radically divergent sensibilities most representative Catholic churches are not "quiet, prayerful places" but have "always been crowded with people, tombs, chapels, altarpieces, paintings, tapestry, Servanthood votive candles, and stained glass," all cru- Leadership for the Third Millennium Servanthood cial elements of a narrative perpetually re- Bennett J. Sims newed in the attentive presence of the 1-56101-145-2 • 183 pp • paper faithful...
...In Molly Winans is director of publications at one side and humiliation on the other...
...As Greecome as statements, as if she knows they ley suggests in his latare unanswerable...
...Each character is torn gether...
...trasting the sacramental (or "analogical") art are unsupported by this same solid Greeley moves safely back to the "old imagination of Catholics with the "di- foundation that serves him so well in neighborhood" for a look at films and alectical" world-view he and others have other contexts...
...I pictured role of converts in shaping American stopped at a secondhand him puttering in an empty church at Catholicism must also be considered in 0 bookshop in Greenwich midweek when it came-the knowlany discussion of the "Catholic imagi- Village...
...But there were some religion tagonist of City of God...
...most recent book is Dr...
...invent him anew one would need to American Catholic culture, a theme Gree- Though his habit of isolating the Catholic blend the gifts of a James T. Farrell with ley ignores in staking boundaries around imagination runs counter to the com- those of a Herman Melville...
...arship, given his track record I would James T. Fisher teaches in the religious studGreeley has been criticized for down- not bet against him with your money, ies department at Saint Louis University...
...Like James Joyce's Dublin, separately, these are plausible arguin tone, the claims less extravagant than site of stories both "fantastic and struc- ments though Greeley's attempt to conin some of Greeley's earlier works on re- tured," Greeley's Chicago-with its nect them with empirical data feels a bit lated topics, notably The Catholic Myth densely Catholic network of parish like being rushed into a sociology course (1990), an eminently "teachable" work neighborhoods-is the kind of "real" before the lecture on art history is comthat has sparked wonderful debates (and place without which "there can be no pleted...
...The interior of this "White world...
...Yet even if we were to grant that the "Catholic imagination" remains constant across generations, no one can deny that American Catholics' knowl- AUGUSTINE, IT AIM'T edge and awareness of other traditions has altered dramatically over time...
...His playing generational differences among much less my own...
...The broader issue here con- "questions" he has raised in the past, the for inspiration, but his own fabled cacerns Protestantism's highly collabora- field of American Catholic studies would reer could only happen in America: to tive and dynamic relationship with be much the poorer, if it existed at all...
...Greeley draws on the culadmission, the source of Taxi Driver's cre- of Catholic cultural identity...
...He has done considerably the British scholar Paul Giles's characfor Raging Bull...
...The novel centers In a preemptive rebuttal at the con- books I hadn't seen before, in half a on Thomas "Pem" Pemberton, whose clusion of his book, Greeley asserts that dozen plastic milk crates on the floor: life and calling, already in doubt, are alcritics "miss the point entirely" if they a hundred books in all, the dust jackets tered once and for all when the brass suggest, among other things, that there is neatly covered in plastic...
...the sight of it so thrilling up there in the growing weary from the effort...
...At one moment, they stand and sea-she has spent an impressive, proso many ways...
...Readers may look elsewhere in enraged some Protestant students) on meaning" for those possessed of "a cer- his massive corpus for more detailed campuses across the country...
...It came as if from afar, lific career fighting "with the invulnerwants Breege, must fight Joseph, must wild and vigorous and whizzing, then able tide," and she shows no signs of welcome his New Zealander fiancee...
...My old copy of The Long Lone- edge that Christianity could no longer nation...
...Or is of "sacramentality of it that we don't love at all...
...The force...
...Here was Karl altar cross is stolen from the church in Commonweal 2 2 May 5, 2000...
...In general, howDecembers are petty, cruel, jealous, greedy, source of personal and violent-and yet impossible to hate...
...His O'Brien never mutes their meanness, but sociological work, his she knows it comes from hurt...
...The shop hailstorm, perhaps subtly like dust setto Catholicism as adults by virtue of its was not thronged...
...she concentrates instead on evocative physical and emotional de- lurks, even if (as is perhaps often the case) tails...
...My Catholic students, with rare E.L...
...Gree- terization of those quintessentially Schrader's Calvinist world-view (the ley has made the seminal insights of the- Protestant artists Emerson and Whitproduct of a fundamentalist Protestant ologian David Tracy on the "analogical man, "privileged seers prophetically emfamily, he viewed his first film at the age imagination" accessible to a wide audi- powered to perceive invisible resemof seventeen) and Scorsese's Catholic vi- ence and has validated by his consider- blances" (American Catholic Arts and Ficsual esthetic was, by the director's own able prestige inquiries into the sources tions, 1992...
...Wild Decembers, the story of their love is the Kingswood-Oxford School in West HartJoseph loves his sister but risks complete this river-it comes from afar...
...Servanthood gives us a new full-blooded...
...These characters wage battle after battle, and O'Brien never GREELEY'S WORLD simplifies their tangled, Byzantine motivations...
...The tension between more than that, here as in the past...
...For Greeley, the by the enchanted imagination of Catholi- the Koln cathedral, unlike Martin Scorsgreat cathedrals are "treasure houses of cism, which senses intuitively that the ese, probably did not commune with stories located inside of storied cities...
...He overlooks, dinary" Catholics as tested against em- does maintain that both traditions reject however, the deep indebtedness of these pirical data...
...The Pope from the Ghetto...
...their prior identity to the new commu- chology...
...It's a raging, storming Still, O'Brien's eye is most often O'Brien's prose takes on a completely dif- sea, which we're all in...
...11 the "unchanged and probably unchang- parativist impulse of much recent scholing Catholic imagination...
...As I sorted through them, half servative evangelicals are currently gen- Paul Elie kneeling, half squatting, I wondered erating a "liturgical turn" within their who had sold them and why, but my own tradition, reshaping a legacy of hos- ne evening not long ago, mind had already supplied a scenario...
...He proposes instead to relate show that "human arousal is a hint of Nancy Savoca (Household Saints) and the Catholic "sensibility" inhering in se- divine arousal...
...They are "flow- "Life is not a placid pool," Edna like Eudora Welty, only bawdy...
...Cowley Publications But wherever Greeley travels, Chicago 28 Temple PI...
...At the novel's climax, when Joseph they are not completely self-conscious sets out to seek his revenge on Bugler, The Catholic about these perceptions of enchantment...
...Boston, Massachusetts 02111 remains the ground of his own analog- 1-800-225-1534 • Fax: 617-423-2354 ical imagination...
...His brief stress the "unlikeness" of human love and Cignani s Joseph and the Wife of Potiphar treatment of Italian American filmmakers divine love...
...Questions everyday life...
...Without the tural products of the universal church ative power...
...At the same time, many con- years...
...He has "attempted little ly" than "analogically...
...We all know picted as "real people-full-bodied and patriarchy does not work any longer...
...Sister Nancy E. Westmeyer, OSF, Dove of the Desert" features 150 care- co-director of Vision Time, an organization Bcnncrr I. 5ims fully arranged images of Jesus and committed to Servant Leadership Mary, angels and saints, the latter de- "My brother, Bennett, has given us a gem of a book...
...When novels, and his essays Breege's love for Bugler lands her in an all feature a conviction asylum, she encounters harrowing that Catholic "differhuman suffering and wonders, "Is it the ence" is rooted in a kind serpent...
...est book, The Catholic Breege and Bugler's love for each other Imagination, "there is a is itself a question without an answer...
...The more collaborative an art form than began in 1248) at the center of the city's "popular tradition" has been "reinforced cathedral building, but the architects of "dense" religious history...
...While not claiming an Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets) is fascilected works of high culture (painting, explicit link between "high art" and nating and showcases his novelist's feel films, cathedrals) with the behavior of "or- "popular" Catholic practice, Greeley for narrative structure...
...The body of the beloved is grace...
...San Xavier del Bac is not paradigm, Servant Leadership...
...by now I know tling on the doorsill...
...His persona as a partnership with writer Paul Schrader, more than to raise the question" of a pos- controversial yet popular celebrity auwho wrote the screenplay for Taxi Dri- sible link between artistic and popular thor at war with Catholic "elites" evokes ver and devised the original treatment sensibilities...
...sion in the village hair salon that reads gler's love gives us hope...
...Doctoro v Underground Church...
...they sport "higher rates longs for the "pattern of the steady days," in his earlier works on the value of Cath- of sexual love because of the impact on and, at that moment, more than anything, olic schools, the centrality of parish life, them of the story of human passion as a we wish it for him, too...
...He begins with a graceful the negative "Augustinian" perspective artists to esthetic and spiritual traditions story of the Koln (Cologne) cathedral, sit- on human sexuality that figures so outside of their own...
...tility toward Catholic ritual...
...tain kind of Catholic sensibility...
...So out with the enchanting aspects," converts do not where the religious stuff is kept, on cardigans went the theological library...
...his fury driving him to commit a foul Imagination For a rather slender "extended essay," crime, he pauses to watch a mare and Audrczu Ai...
...Is it that we love too much...
...Like Yeats's trained on turbulent sorrow, and her ferent feel when the two are alone to- Cuchulain, O'Brien battles with this gaze is fearless...
...Ronald as Greeley, did not really know any Knox's Enthusiasm...
...Characters in Wild and the persistence of ethnicity as a hint of divine passion...
...communal identity...
...ers that are hatched in the snows," and O'Brien has said...
...Paul Tillich's TheolProtestants until they entered the work City of God ogy of Peace...
...destruction of their life together to satiate his hatred, his "useless and aping belligerence...
...he writes, "but it is still Commonweal 2 1 May 5, 2000 Two of Scorsese's greatest films, for ex- more than one version of the Catholic church works much more "dialecticalample, were products of the director's imagination...
...His -Albert H. Ottenweller, Retired Bishop of Steubenville knowledge of Koln is presumably the result of his affiliation with a social science research center located in that city...
...propensity among CathHappiness rarely enters in, and then only olics to take the objects tinged by dread-Bugler, already en- and events and persons gaged to a beautiful woman, has no rea- of ordinary life as hints son to court trouble with the immensely of what God is like, in shy sister of a man who hates him-and which God somehow Commonweal 2 0 May 5, 2000 ever, The Catholic Imagination is gentler striking...
...At the Hispano-Moorish mission "A marvelous book...
Vol. 127 • May 2000 • No. 9
