Priests: A Calling in Crisis

Rating:
Summary: More sociobabble from Greeley
Review: Again using his sociological talents -- largely poll reading -- Fr. Andrew Greeley assures us that Catholic priests in America are no worse off than other employed males in the helping professions. According to him their only problem is really that they don't get along well with or understand their parishioners. Well, if true that is pretty devastating. Priests appear to be less educated, less intellectually curious, less conscientious, and less emphathetic than their parishioners have come to expect. Once the old Church and its Tridentine clericalism vanished what also vanished were the old reasons for revering priests. The priests have not found an alternative aura with which to dazzle the laity. Greeley sort of hints at this but all his statistics don't really amount to a hill of beans, and he underplays the role of celibacy in the sexual abuse scandal. Again I say he should stick to writing novels.

Rating:
Summary: More sociobabble from Greeley
Review: Again using his sociological talents -- largely poll reading -- Fr. Andrew Greeley assures us that Catholic priests in America are no worse off than other employed males in the helping professions. According to him their only problem is really that they don't get along well with or understand their parishioners. Well, if true that is pretty devastating. Priests appear to be less educated, less intellectually curious, less conscientious, and less emphathetic than their parishioners have come to expect. Once the old Church and its Tridentine clericalism vanished what also vanished were the old reasons for revering priests. The priests have not found an alternative aura with which to dazzle the laity. Greeley sort of hints at this but all his statistics don't really amount to a hill of beans, and he underplays the role of celibacy in the sexual abuse scandal. Again I say he should stick to writing novels.

Rating:
Summary: Well written, carefully argued book
Review: I should first say that this is the first and only book I've ever read by Greeley. Secondly I should say that I am not a sociologist, but I am university-educated (and currently in a doctoral program in theology). This is not only a very well written book (and therefore a pleasure to read), it is also a very methodologically sound sociological investigation of Roman Catholic priests in the U.S. The sort of banal assessment of the Roman Catholic priesthood reflected for example in the previous review of N. Ravitch ("Priests appear to be less educated, less intellectually curious, less conscientious, and less emphathetic than their parishioners have come to expect"; "all his [Greeley's] statistics don't really amount to a hill of beans"; "he [Greeley] underplays the role of celibacy in the sexual abuse scandal" etc.) are challenged by Greeley, who instead offers a picture shaped not by conventional wisdom, prejudice or anecdotal guesswork, but on studies interpreteted through a rigorous and critical sociological method. Greeley's data come from three sources: the study of an institute at the University of Chicago of which he was the head, and two Los Angeles Times studies. Each of these data sets are critically interpreted. For example, the first study was conducted in the 1970s and so it's not presumed that it necessarily reflects the current situation of American priests. The two LA Times studies were conducted around the time the sexual abuse scandals broke and shortly thereafter, and although Greeley says that by the inclusion of several thousand priests (both religious and diocesan, and from geographically diverse areas) the Times did far better than any other current studies, he himself would have wanted a larger sample. Nevertheless, these studies are not fundamentally flawed, and Greeley is very willing to work within imaginable margins of error so as not to skew the conclusions.
Among the most interesting contributions made in this book are the careful assessment of the percentage of homosexual priests, the discussion of the level of happiness among priests with their chosen profession, and the implications of celibacy for priests (i.e. the myths that clerical celibacy has something to do with why men leave the priesthood or with the sexual abuse by some priests). The only reason I give the book four and not five stars is that at the very end, after his outstanding sociological study, Greeley moves briefly into the realm of theology. I found myself less satisfied with some of his suggestions in this portion of the book. I would certainly not say that Greeley "should stick to writing novels" -- though I might say that instead of including this final bit in which he records his theological musings, he might have done better to have "stuck to sociology" -- a field in which this book shows him to be an exceedingly competent practitioner.