There are few men of the cloth world-wide who arouse the passion and interest that Chicago’s Andrew Greeley does. Priest, sociologist, Irish historian, and best-selling novelist, Greeley is always controversial. In New York recently to promote his latest novel, Irish Gold, a romance mystery with historical overtones, he talked to Patricia Harty.
“The Irish are the most likely of all American ethnic groups to be in constant communication with their sister and their mother. And somewhat less so, but still ahead of everybody else, with their brothers and their father.”
IA: Can you tell me about growing up Irish in Chicago?
Fr. Greeley: I’m the grandson of immigrants. We grew up during the Great Depression. Not exactly poor, but kind of impoverished. We were very conscious that we were Irish, but I don’t think we knew much about what that meant.
I only began to realize there was this distinctive Irish culture in high school, when I began to read the Celtic revival plays. And my sister claims I only really became Irish when I went to the University of Chicago. Then I started really defining myself as Irish in reaction to the fact that my colleagues in the sociological fraternity did not think ethnic groups were at all important at that time.
I think some of them still don’t think it, but the evidence is overwhelming that Irish and Italians and Poles are different and that these ethnic backgrounds are strong predictors of cultural behavior.
IA: What do you think of the current backlash against immigrants?
Fr. Greeley: I think it’s a sin and a shame. Immigrants made this country. The evidence that the children of immigrants are far more successful than the children of the native-born is overwhelming. Immigration is an asset to a country. And even now, the immigrants actually bring more money into the society than they take out from it, and they do the work that most other Americans won’t do. So I think they’re an economic asset — most economists think that too. It’s just people like Pete Wilson in California who are trading on bigotry and prejudice.
IA: I think it’s interesting that Wilson’s mother was Margaret Callahan, whose parents were from Kerry.
Fr. Greeley: Really? I didn’t know that. Well, God forgive him, says I. They took us in, though they didn’t want us, and it’s shameful that we don’t want to take others in.
IA: Until I came over here myself I didn’t understand that anybody could be Irish-American. I thought you were American and that was it.
Fr. Greeley: Well, it’s amazing how many cultural traits survive. I’ve done a lot of work on this and some of the most important behaviors in a person’s life involve his or her relationships with parents and siblings, and the Irish in this country certainly sustain the old-country custom of high levels of communication with siblings and parents, especially mothers and sisters. The Irish are the most likely of all American ethnic groups to be in constant communication with their sister and their mother. And somewhat less so, but still ahead of everybody else, with their brothers and their father.
The closeness of Irish family life is replicated in this country. As are a lot of economic and social attitudes. For example, in Europe, the Irish are second only to the Dutch in their tolerance for homosexual marriage ceremonies. And the same thing is true of Irish-Americans.
IA: Do you think that the Catholic Church is in tune with today’s Catholics on, say, issues like divorce and homosexuality?
Fr. Greeley: Well, it depends on what you mean by the Church. If you mean the Church’s official teaching, no. But if you mean what the parish clergy do routinely, yes. The number of annulments sought last year fell by 25 percent. And that doesn’t mean Catholics are less likely to get divorces; it means, rather, that most priests are willing to handle it all in the rectory. They use some kind of internal forum solution. So people don’t have to go through the annoyance of an annulment procedure. The same would go on homosexuality.
At the parish level, the clergy are very sensitive and compassionate. Some of of the hierarchy might want to be that way, too, but officially they have to follow the Vatican stance. And the Vatican, in this, as in so many others things, doesn’t have a clue what life in the modern world is like.
IA: There was a recent conference in Rome on the role of nuns — it seems that they still expect them to take the role of the handmaiden — seems a shame to me, especially since the Episcopalians are making women priests.
Fr. Greeley: I think it’s a shame too. But I’m not the Pope, I don’t get to vote.
IA: At the UN conference on population control in Cairo, the Vatican seemed to be taking an Islamic stance in terms of women.
Fr. Greeley: Well, that was scandalous. However, they did sign the document at the end, and it’s the first document they’ve ever signed of that sort. But they didn’t get any credit for that. They had so fouled up their image by making an alliance with the Sudan and Iran that nobody paid any attention when the Vatican finally signed the document. But no, it is my impression that most American Catholics, particularly Catholic women, who are aware of that, were appalled by it.
IA: It would seem to me in these days when they’re trying to bring people back into the Church, and hold onto the ones they have, it was a ridiculous stance to take.
Fr. Greeley: Priests that I know would not support such a stance. And a lot of bishops wouldn’t either. But the priests do it on their own in the parishes and don’t talk about it. And the bishops just have to keep their mouths shut.
IA: In your case what do the hierarchy think of your novels? How come you’re allowed to pursue this other life and still be a practicing Catholic priest? Is there a problem?
Fr. Greeley: I’ve never had any problems. I think there was once an attempt to issue a warning about me, and they thought better of it. Because that would have made my publisher’s day. [Laughs] A quasicondemnation from Rome. But no, I’ve never had any problem. I was assigned by Cardinal Meyer back in ’65 to writing and research, and I’ve been doing that ever since, and nobody’s stopped me. As to how they feel, well, I think some of the bishops like my work and some don’t.
IA: Would they think of removing you?
Fr. Greeley: I think they might be afraid, because they know I wouldn’t go. I wouldn’t leave the priesthood, not if they three me out. And they know that.
IA: It seems to me, too, that the Irish-American church, or the Catholic Church in this country is different from the Catholic Church in Ireland.
Fr. Greeley: Well, there’s a lot more bishops in this country — there are a couple of hundred. And you would have some that are more conservative than Dr. Connell of Dublin. And a lot would be far more liberal than the most liberal of the Irish bishops, should there be any such anymore. I think they probably don’t have the level of learning that a lot of the Irish bishops have, but they are probably a little more pragmatic. Though it seems to me that the Irish hierarchy has shied away from fights recently. They’re not really interested in fighting anymore. Dr. Connell being an exception to that.
IA: Well, they’ve had quite a coming-out in the Catholic Church in Ireland in terms of Bishop Casey. The bishop has a baby and so on.
Fr. Greeley: Ah well. He wasn’t the first and won’t be the last. And you noticed he was in the book [Irish Gold].
IA: I noticed that there seems to be a character based on him in the book.
Fr. Greeley: I wrote that part of the book before he had his trouble. But I wasn’t going to change it. I like the man. I think he’s one of the best bishops in the world, regardless of what happened.
IA: Do you think the days of celibacy are coming to an end? How did this practice of celibacy start out anyway?
Fr. Greeley: Well, it started out, I suppose, because Jesus was celibate. As far as we know.
IA: As far as we know. He and Mary Magdalene seemed to have had a pretty good relationship.
Fr. Greeley: But he could have been married and his wife might have died. There’s no evidence either way from the scriptures. There’s no mention made of a wife. He’s called the rabbi. Well, to be a rabbi, you’d have had to be 40 and married. Maybe he wasn’t, strictly speaking, a rabbi.
St. Paul probably was married, because he was a rabbi. St. Peter certainly was, because we have a reference to his mother-in-law. I think the most likely position to take is that Jesus was not married. But there would have been nothing wrong with it if he were. It wouldn’t have changed his role one bit.
A lot of bishops have had children through the ages, a lot of Irish bishops have had children. During the Synod at Maynooth in 1542, I think it was, one of the items on the agenda was concubinage, which meant the practice of multiple wives. And it never came to a vote because both the lay lords and the spiritual lords were all practicing it. So the idea of a bishop having a woman is not new in Irish culture. I think he [Bishop Casey] may have been talked into resigning too quickly.
IA: I think there’s a lot of support for him, still, from the people of Galway. But then, a lot of people were inclined to blame the woman, Annie Murphy: “That Irish-American had to come over and corrupt the Bishop etc.”
Fr. Greeley: Typical Yank tourist. Well, I see no point in blaming anybody for something that happens like that.
IA: Still, many are fed up with what seems like the hypocrisy of the Church. Whether it’s on homosexuality, when it’s quite obvious that some their own priests are homosexual, or celibates telling everybody else that they shouldn’t practice birth control.
Fr. Greeley: Well, I think that what particularly offends them is the authoritarianism of the Church. But I think also there is an increasing realization among the Irish hierarchy and clergy that the old game won’t work. That the authoritarian Church is passé. Nobody will listen anymore. It is said that there are two major religious movements in Irish Catholicism. One is the volunteer movement. Any place in the world where there’s suffering or misery, young Irish people are there trying to deal with it. Enormously impressive. And the other is the literary, artistic movement — poets, novelists, playwrights, songwriters, all of whom are Catholic. It’s no longer Anglo-Catholic or Protestant — it’s Catholic. And it’s said that this may be the golden age of Irish literature. The Church doesn’t know what to do about that either.
IA: The one thing that I’ve gathered from interviewing Irish-American corporate leaders is that many of them attribute their success to the education they received from the Jesuit and other good Catholic schools here.
Fr. Greeley: Well, I think the first reason for their success is their parents, who insisted on industry and studiousness, getting their homework done, doing what the school demands of you. I’d put the first reason there. But there isn’t any doubt that the Catholics who went to Catholic schools did better than those who didn’t. And I think the Catholic schools continue to do that. The Jesuits have 47 high schools around the country. And they’re all crowded.
IA: Many of today’s Catholics are Filipino or Latino. Do you think it’s changing the church — is it a different kind of Catholicism?
Fr. Greeley: It’s a different kind of Catholicism, surely, than the Catholicism of the Vatican Council. It’s not nearly as doctrinally or morally rigid as it used to be. The problem with the Hispanics is that we don’t have a native clergy for them. Since none of these [Hispanic] countries have a surplus of priests — most of them have a shortage.
We have not been able to bring in priests to work with the Hispanics the way we did for the Irish and the Poles and Italians and the Germans and Czechs and the Slovaks and the Hungarians. And so they end up with an alienated Irish clergy. And over against them, the Pentecostal churches have people that are Puerto Rican, Cuban or Mexican who speak the language as their native language. So that’s the real difficulty there, that we have not been able to find a native clergy for them. I think we ought to ordain, say, in Chicago, 500 Hispanic deacons, and give them storefronts and let them be out there with the people. That would be one way to stop the terrible erosion that’s going on. Only 70 percent of the Hispanics in this country are Catholic.
We lost a lot of pre-Famine immigrants from Ireland who came to the South with no clergy. They were gone in a generation. But from the Famine on, we had enough priests for every wave of immigrant groups. Until now.
But to get back to your question, the Italians are a good case in point. They were not particularly devout in Italy. But once they got here they found immigrant parishes with parochial schools waiting for them. And by-and-large, they sent their kids to those schools because they saw this as a way of becoming American and getting ahead. And gradually, the Italian-Americans, and they don’t like it when I say this, but they admit the truth, they’ve been Hibernicized. So now they’re as devout as the Irish. And something of the same is happening to those Hispanic-American kids who go to Catholic grammar schools and high schools. Their style of religious devotion becomes very like that of the Irish.
IA: I also find in the U.S. that Catholicism is more like being a Nationalist in the North of Ireland. It’s a way of defining yourself.
Fr. Greeley: I think the neighborhood parish in this country is much more important than it is, certainly, in Dublin or in other Irish cities. Nobody in Dublin, when you ask them where their son is, says Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal or The Church of the Three Patrons. Here they’ll give you the parish. Even a Protestant who knows the ways of the urban Catholic when asked where he’s from will say, ‘I’m from Our Lady of Peace.’ They smile, but they know the custom. Parish is very important here, very important.
IA: Why did you become a priest?
Fr. Greeley: Because I liked the work that I saw the priests in the parish doing. It certainly wasn’t because of family pressure. The family was hardly against it, but they never suggested it. They were pleased. But they made it clear at the beginning — if you want to leave, leave.
My father — through the Knights of Columbus — worked with an awful lot of alcoholic priests. Now this was at a time when the problem would hardly be mentioned. But somehow or other, when the Knights found a guy who had a problem with the drink, they’d call on my father. So he knew about the problem. He said, most of the people that he had to deal with were people that shouldn’t have been priests in the first place, because it was their parents’ vocation, not their own. So he said to me, don’t let that ever happen to you.
IA: In Ireland it was a great thing to have a priest in the family.
Fr. Greeley: For a long time, in both countries, it was a path to upward mobility. It was a way of becoming a professional.
IA: And a way of getting an education.
Fr. Greeley: Right. In this country, that’s no longer the case. And I think it’s no longer the case in Ireland. It’s not a rural country anymore. And the educational system is sufficiently expansive. You can get a professional training in some other field if you’re bright enough. You may not be able to practice in Ireland; you can go to other countries and be very successful.
IA: Recently, both in this country and in Ireland there has been a phenomenal number of priests implicated in sexual abuse cases involving children.
Fr. Greeley: My pastor in Tucson, in his home parish — I won’t mention the town, but it’s in West Cork — at a parish meeting one night the Guards came in and arrested the priest on the spot. Cops wouldn’t do that in this country. I think they should, but they wouldn’t do it.
I estimate in this country, based on the Chicago statistics, that 3.27 percent of priests have had this problem.
IA: Do you think there should be more careful screening?
Fr. Greeley: Sure there should. We weren’t screened at all. They have begun to give them some sort of elementary tests. But these tests don’t [point to] this problem at all. And it’s not clear yet that they have tests that do. There are some in the experimental stage that may screen [through] the problem. But you can’t be very confident about it. So, at this stage of the game, you can’t screen for it. Especially, because it seems that the syndrome really takes over when the person is around 30.
IA: And by that time they are in a position with some authority so they can —
Fr. Greeley: Right. Where they can find victims. What they have to do is pull people out as soon as the charges are made. You’ve got to have instant removal — you don’t cover up and send the person to five or six more parishes. And then you have to have a very credible unit that reviews the case. You can’t have priests sitting in judgment on other priests, or they won’t remove anybody. So in Chicago, we have a committee that has three priests and six lay people, and five of those lay people are women. It’s the first time since Bridget of Kildare that women have sat in judgment on the qualifications of priests.
IA: I was recently talking to Jimmy Smith, who was in Long Kesh during the hunger strike. He was emphatic that the bishops didn’t support the prisoners.
Fr. Greeley: No. Down through the years they’ve been criticized for supporting the violence and terrorism, and they’ve been criticized for not supporting the violence and terrorism. It’s a tough one. And I don’t know what I would do. But, as I keep pointing out to people, we would not have the chance that we have now for peace in Ireland if it hadn’t been for the IRA. I mean, there is now a serious possibility that there’s enough Unionists in the North who have come to understand that they have to give Catholics full rights. There has to be power sharing. They can’t be discriminated against economically. If there’s enough Protestants who are willing to do that maybe we can have peace.
IA: Do you think the South has forgotten about the North?
Fr. Greeley: Well, as one Nationalist said to me, I don’t particularly trust the Unionists up here, but I trust them more than I do the Catholics in the South.
I was on the Gay Byrne program one night and he asked the audience how many of them were concerned about the problems in Northern Ireland. Most of them put up their hands. Then he asked how many of them would put it in the first or second place of their agenda. Most of the hands were not raised. And that seemed to me to be typical of my own experiences when I’m in Ireland. They want justice up there, but they don’t want it to interfere with their lives in this nice little economically expanding country. So I don’t think they want unity now. It’s not high on their agenda.
I don’t know how many Catholics in the Republic of Ireland even know about the pogroms in 1921, at the time of partition. I’ve never seen them mentioned in the American media. That idiot [William] Safire, goes to London, talks to some of his rich British friends and writes that stupid fool thing about the British having to take care of a million of their subjects. Well, it’s only 900,000, but what about the 600,000 Catholics that are technically their subjects? They’ve never protected them. I’m about to start writing a syndicated column and that’s one of the first columns I’m going to write.
IA: It infuriated me that Safire wrote that column for the New York Times from London. He writes about Northern Ireland and he doesn’t even go there!
Fr. Greeley: He is what Nuala would call a “feckin’ eejet.”
IA: Nuala [the main character in Irish Gold] uses that kind of language a lot.
Fr. Greeley: The publisher of Irish Gold is a man named Thomas Patrick Doherty. And he was shocked. He said, ‘you’ve got to take some of these out. I said, why? It’s only a pale imitation of the way they really speak.
I’m told that even the Irish speakers out in the West use Anglo-Saxon obscenities. My theory is something like Dermot’s, [Nuala’s boyfriend] that the Irish love to play with language, they’re word crazy. And you come along with these wonderful Anglo-Saxon words and pounce on them with great glee. Make far better use of them than the Brits would ever have.
IA: Who are your characters based on?
Fr. Greeley: Generally, no one in particular. I mean, the character Eddie Hayes is clearly Eamon Casey. But none of the others are people I know. They’re combinations of people. And almost always unconscious combinations. The character appears in my mind, full-blown with all his or her talents and weaknesses and fears and hopes. And then, as I write about them, I get to know them better. But they are not, for the most part, conscious imitations of anybody.
IA: How do you think an Irish woman of Nuala’s age would react to your book?
Fr. Greeley: Well, I’ve had a couple of that generation read it. And they said, it’s dead feckin’ real.
IA: I don’t think a modern-day Irish Nuala would be saying: “Glory be to God and the holy saints Brigid, Patrick and Columcille too!” I was thinking that maybe it might be an Irish-American saying, or an expression that an older person might use.
Fr. Greeley: Maybe it’s an older person. You know, I’ve had people that are real Irish read my books where something goes on in Ireland —
IA: We tend to nit-pick.
Fr. Greeley: Well, but that’s fine. The Irish Times did a review of my book Rite of Spring, the last quarter of which is in Ireland. A favorable review, which blew my mind. The Irish Times to publish a favorable review of a book by a Yankee. And he only found two errors. One is that I had them eating in a restaurant in the basement of the National Gallery, and it was really on the ground floor. And the other was that I had a ferry leaving at a time when it would come into the docks. Those were the only mistakes. So I felt pretty good about that.
IA: I just found one little scone that turned into a croissant in Bewleys.
Fr. Greeley: Oh glory be to God, how terrible. [Laughter] A perfectly good Irish scone turned into a feckin’ French bun.
IA: Do people always bring up the fact that you’re a priest?
Fr. Greeley: Pretty much. I’ve had people come up to me and say that the religious faith in my books is what got them through a certain crisis. I’m writing for people like that, who know what they’re about, who see the religious points in my books and find them meaningful to their lives.
People who haven’t read the stories think they’re steamy or racy or erotic or porn, which Mary Gordon called them.
IA: In Irish Gold Ma at the end of her life, seems to wonder if there is a heaven.
Fr. Greeley: Oh no. Ma expects to be reunited with Pa. She wonders like we all do, but she’s still pretty confident she’s going to see him. But she thinks maybe she’s been too harsh in her judgments on the Church.
IA: Do you believe in heaven and hell?
Fr. Greeley: I don’t know that you have to believe in hell. I mean, His Holiness himself, in this new book of his, expresses considerable doubt that there’s anybody in hell. I’m inclined to think that God is both merciful and just, but she’s more merciful than she is just. And that God can get around the hardest of human hearts. So, do I believe that life has a purpose which transcends itself?
William James, the great American psychologist, who was Irish American, believed in the hereafter as his life went on. People asked him why. He said, because it’s intolerable to think that I will never see those I love again.
Yes. I believe in heaven. I wouldn’t know how to describe what it’s like. It’s far beyond our ability to describe. But I know that love is at the center of the universe and the center of everything. And if that be the case, there’s nothing to worry about.
IA: To get back to Irish Gold. How do you think Irish people are going to respond to Michael Collins being in a romance novel?
Fr. Greeley: Well, it’s a romance. It’s a mystery. I mean, the mystery is up there at the very beginning, why Dermot’s grandparents had to leave. And then he begins to suspect that Michael Collins is the reason. So it’s a romance and a mystery, and maybe a bit of a fantasy. I don’t know how they’ll react. They’ll probably complain, you know, who does this Yank priest think he is?
IA: I thought that there might be some conscious decision on your part, or a wish to educate Irish-Americans a little bit on Irish history.
Fr. Greeley: Well, that certainly. And not only Irish-Americans, but all Americans. The letters between Collins and Kitty Kiernan are real. They gave me permission to reprint them for something like a hundred dollars. I would have paid a thousand easily. They’re beautiful. Collins was a complex man. But I think my Collins is a little more likely than the one in Tom Flanagan’s The End of the Hunt. Not to say that he’s wrong. But he misses the wit and the charm. And he completely misses the devotion the letters to Kitty Kiernan display.
IA: As far as I know, if a nun makes or is left a pile of money it goes to her convent. Is your money your own?
Fr. Greeley: I’m a diocesan priest, so the money’s my own. And I’ve given most of it away. I’ve set up a chair in Roman Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago in honor of my parents. [$1 million]. And I’ve set up a foundation for Catholic innercity schools. [$1 million]. I didn’t start writing to make money. I don’t need much to live, so . . . .
IA: Just one more question. What do you think about the Irish-American role in terms of the North or Ireland — what should they be doing now?
Fr. Greeley: Well, I think they should be pressuring the Clinton administration to come up with the funds they promised to help with the peace process. And Irish-American groups should also be taking advantage of the economic expansion that peace is likely to make possible and invest a lot of money there. There’s nothing wrong with Ireland that a few more jobs wouldn’t cure.
IA: Do you think we will have peace?
Fr. Greeley: I think that there’s going to be peace. I think the problems will go away and eventually there will be one Ireland.
IA: Thank you Fr. Greeley.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the January/February 1995 issue of Irish America. ⬥
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