Father Greeley, Defender of the Faithful

The New York Times
May 31, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/opinion/father-andrew-greeley-defender-of-the-faithful.html?_r=0

The Rev. Andrew Greeley, who died this week in Chicago, gained fame and lots of money writing best-selling novels combining Catholicism, Irish America and sex.

Time has dimmed the appealing novelty of a priest writing pulpy lines about lusty seminarians and nuns with secret sorrows. What made Father Greeley a writer of influence and heroism was far more serious: his early effort to raise an alarm about what he called the gravest crisis in the Catholic Church since the Reformation, the sexual abuse of children.

From the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, years before the scandal metastasized in Boston and engulfed the church worldwide, he sounded a prophetic warning about predator priests and bishops who protected them. He wasn’t alone: parents and victims had been battling the church hierarchy for years by then, and journalists like Jason Berry had done much to expose those crimes. But Father Greeley was among the first and most effective critics from within, defying his fellow priests on behalf of the betrayed laity. He had a pulpit, a column in The Chicago Sun-Times, and he used it often.

In 1992 he wrote: “Parents complain first to the church and are rebuffed. Then they go to the police and are given the runaround. They return to the church and are told in effect that the church thinks their child is lying. Reluctantly, they sue. The church has forced itself again into an adversarial relationship with trusting and devout Catholic laity.” Father Greeley, a sociologist, had great affection for the people in the pews. His words in their defense were strident, defiant, alarmist, and exactly right.