Andrew M. Greeley - Böcker

For several years now, the Roman Catholic Church and the institution of the priesthood itself have been at the center of a firestorm of controversy. While many of the criticisms lodged against the actions of the Church - and a small number of its priests - are justified, the conventional wisdom that has gained currency as an explanation for these actions is, according to Andrew M. Greeley in Priests, often flat-out wrong. Neither liberal nor conservative, Priests offers nothing less than a portrait of the priesthood today. No stranger to controversy himself, Greeley challenges those analysts and the media who parrot them in placing the blame for recent Church scandals on the mandate of celibacy or a clerical culture that supports homosexuality. Drawing upon reliable national survey samples of priests, Greeley demolishes current stereotypes about the percentage of homosexual priests, the level of personal and professional happiness among priests, the role of celibacy in their lives, and many other issues. With Greeley's statistical evidence and provocative recommendations for change, Priests offers a new vision for American Catholics.

Father Andrew Greeley recounts the dramatic unfolding of the centuries-old conclave of cardinals in this firstshand account of the papal election of 2005. 16-page insert.

Always provocative on the subject of sex and human sexuality, Father Andrew Greeley gives his candid thoughts on how everyone can use his or her sexuality as a positive, delightful force in everyday life.

Andrew Greeley looks back at Irish history and at the famous Irish of today to show how the Irish in America really live, think, act--and what makes them statistically the richest and best educated gentile group in American society.

Discusses how Mary enlarges the Christian concept of God, how Christ's teaching can help us renew ourselves, and which are the most important of the Ten Commandments

Many observers assume that America is a much less religious nation than it was forty years ago. According to Andrew Greeley, however, this is simply not true. Carefully analyzing surveys conducted over the past half-century, Greeley concludes that rates of church attendance, prayer, church membership, activity in church organizations, belief in life after death, and other measures of religious involvement have remained surprisingly constant.

Jesus of Galilee taught through stories, which even today contain the power to startle us out of our prejudices and preconceptions. Now Father Andrew M. Greeley, one of America's most beloved storytellers, examines the parables told by Jesus in search of a fuller understanding of the man and his message.This engaging and informal collection of homilies reveals a Jesus whose simple parables carry profound lessons about the Kingdom of Heaven. Along the way, Father Greeley touches on such provocative topics as the significance of Jesus's Jewish roots, his deep and revolutionary relationship with women, "The Da Vinci Code", and "The Passion of the Christ". He also singles out the four greatest parables, which best illustrate the infinite love and mercy of the God whose kingdom began with Jesus and continues even today.As a storyteller, Jesus often surprised his listeners with unexpected twists that challenged them to see the world in a whole new light. Father Greeley's insightful tour of the Gospels provides a fresh look at the parables that strips away centuries of false and mistaken interpretations to get at the essential truth of who Jesus really was and what he believed.

Petey Pat Kane and Mariana Pia Pelligrino have been in love with each other their whole lives. Even Father Jimmy recognized it the moment he met the little couple as their second-grade teacher at St. Regis' in Poplar Grove, Chicago. But years later, on a night that was supposed to be one of the best of their lives, Pete makes a choice that forces him to leave his city behind. Guilt over running away from Mariana and the truths he is too scared to face lead him into the Army, where he becomes Captain Kane, war hero. But nothing can make him forget his humiliation. Or his love for Mariana. Then, on his third deployment in Iraq, Pete is injured in a roadside bomb attack and finds himself alive...and dead, on a spiritual journey of the afterlife so wondrous he is given a second chance at life from God Himself. Yet even a heavenly encounter may not be enough to overcome Pete's legendary stubbornness. That task must fall to Pete's oldest friend, Father Jimmy, who welcomes the wounded soldier back to Poplar Grove.With Christmas approaching, time is running out for Pete to complete the most important mission of his life: convincing himself that he and Mariana really were meant to share a special message of love with the world.

Petey Pat Kane and Mariana Pia Pelligrino have been in love with each other their whole lives. But on a night that is supposed to be one of the best of their lives, Peter makes a choice that forces him to leave Chicago - and Mariana - behind. Guilt leads him into the Army, where he becomes Captain Kane, war hero. But nothing can make him forget his love for Mariana. On his third deployment in Iraq, Peter is injured and finds himself on a wondrous spiritual journey, both alive and dead, where he is given a second chance at life from God Himself. With Christmas approaching, time is running out for Peter to complete the most important mission of his life: convincing himself that he and Mariana were meant to share a special message of love with the world.

In his runaway best seller "The Cardinal Sins", Father Andrew M. Greeley opened the eyes of the world to the fact that though a priest may be a man of God, he is still a man - subject to the passions and emotions of a man and capable of sinning, repenting, and then sinning again. In "Thy Brother's Wife", Greeley focuses on two brothers, one a priest and one a senator, who, each in his own way, love the same woman. The direction of Paul and Sean Cronin's lives was shaped the day their father, a self-made multimillionaire, decided that one of his boys would grow up to be a cardinal and the other would become President of the United States. But Michael Cronin did not stop there. He also decided that his elder son would take as his wife the beautiful Nora, who had come into the Cronin home as an orphan and who had loved and been loved from the day of her arrival - by the younger brother. Long out of print, "Thy Brother's Wife" is a classic tale by one of America's most loved story tellers.

Father Laurence O'Toole McAuliffe, the pastor of Saint Finian's parish in Forest Springs, is weary and worn out, his priesthood and faith in tatters. Once literally a bomb-throwing radical and then a Vatican Council liberal, Lar McAuliffe has grown old and cynical and, worse, is smart enough to know what is happening to him and to despise himself. God, the Cardinal, or some combination of the two, play a dirty trick on Lar by sending Father James Stephen Michael Finbar Keenan, the 'new priest', to the parish. Lar is expecting a classic confrontation between young and old, between sardonic maturity and enthusiastic inexperience. But the new priest does not fit the stereotype. Father Lar is tempted to try to create the classic rectory conflict, but the new priest forestalls that by becoming his friend. Together they face the conflicts and joys, the hopes and pains of the contemporary Catholic parish - the old-fashioned school principal; the bravely dying woman; the destroying mother; the broken family; the reactionary finance committee; frustrated young lovers; and, the chancery office and timid Cardinal, who interferes with the priests' work on every possible occasion.

Countless readers have been delighted by Father Andrew M. Greeley's bestselling novels. Now Forge is proud to bring one of Father Greeley's classic titles back into print. You're in for an unforgettable experience when America's master storyteller turns his enormous narrative gifts to the passionate, haunting subject of the American woman, searching for - and often finding - love and faith. There's teenaged Rosemarie, coming to grips with the evil of the twentieth century - or is it the evil in the human heart? Peggy, whose widowhood plunges her into the cold of loneliness. Rita, whose marriage is rich and fulfilling - except at its core. Laura, torn between three lovers, one of them a seminarian. Julie, haunted by something that happened long ago. Sionna Marie, an imp diving passionately into adulthood. And Patricia, caught in a web she may not have the power to break.

The religious imagination is alive and well in the movies. Contrary to those who criticize Hollywood, popular movies very often have metaphorically represented God on the screen. From Clint Eastwood as an avenging angel in Pale Rider and Nicolas Cage as a love-sick angel in City of Angels, to Jessica Lange as an angel of death in All That Jazz, and from George Burns as God in Oh God! to Audrey Hepburn in Alwaysto pure white light in Fearless and Flatliners, God is very much present in the movies. Images of angels and God used by movie makers are explored here.This intelligent, insightful volume is an exercise in urban anthropology. Religious imagination is the subject and the movie house is its location. The authors show that the religious imagination is irrepressible, and shows up in our best-known example of popular cultures, movies. Contrary to conservative opinion that suggests that Hollywood is anti-religious, Greeley and Bergesen find just the opposite. Ordinary movies, not explicitly about religion and not made by particularly religious individuals often demonstrate some basic religious theme, point, or message. God in the Movies does not judge or approve, recommend or criticize; the authors simply alert the reader to the great variety of metaphors for God, angels, heaven, and hell, from beautiful women to white light at the end of the tunnel to Groundhog Day. They are not concerned with explicitly religious movies. This is not a study of Ben Huror The Last Temptations of Christ, but rather of ordinary mass-release movies, including Field of Dreams, Always, All That Jazz, Commandments, Babette's Feast, Fearless, Breaking the Waves, Jacob's Ladder, Flatliners, Ghost, Pale Rider, Star Wars, 2001, Dogma, and even Japanimation, like Ghost in the Shell.The authors' vivid explication of various cinematic metaphors for God is accompanied by an analysis of what these movies tell about our sociological attitudes toward life and death. They also discuss the social conditions that give rise to various kinds of imagery and forms of movies. In a real sense, this book is for both the professional concerned with religion, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, media and cinema studies, and the layperson interested in how popular movies also contain religious imagery.

Most sociologists of religion describe a general decline in religious faith and practice in Europe over the last two centuries. The secularizing forces of the Enlightenment, science, industrialization, the influence of Freud and Marx, and urbanization are all felt to have diminished the power of the churches and demystified the human condition. In Andrew Greeley's view, such overarching theories and frameworks do not begin to accommodate a wide variety of contrasting and contrary social phenomena. Religion at the End of the Second Millenium, engages the complexities of contemporary Europe to present a nuanced picture of religious faith rising, declining, or remaining stable.While challenging the secularization model, Greeley's approach is not polemical. He examines belief in God and in life after death, belief in superstition and magic, convictions about the relations between church and state, attitudes toward religion and science, and the effect of religion on the everyday lives of people. Drawing upon statistical and empirical data spanning twenty years, Greeley shows that while religion has increased in some countries (most notably the former communist countries and especially Russia) in others it has declined (Britain, the Netherlands, and France). In some countries it is relatively unchanged (primarily the traditional Catholic countries), and in still others (some of the social democratic countries) it has both declined and increased. In terms of individuals, Greeley finds that religion becomes more important to people as they age. He observes that surveys showing less religion among the young ignore the possibility that the age correlation is a life cycle matter and not a sign of social change.Patently, religion in Europe changed enormously between the end of the first millenium and the end of the second. In Greeley's judgment, the change has been an improvement, not because superstition has been eliminated (it has not), but because freedom to exercise religious belief has replaced compulsion.

The number of minority students, many of them not Catholic, who have enrolled in Catholic secondary schools is substantial. Since it is reasonable to assume that the cost of tuition in such schools is considerable for a minority family, the phenomenon suggests that parents in these families believe that their children will obtain a better education in Catholic secondary schools. The problem of measuring the effect of Catholic secondary schools on minority students is difficult because it is a complex and intricate task to separate family background and student motivation as influences on academic performance from the school's contribution. Here, Andrew M. Greeley makes the case that the burden of proof rests on those who contend that family and student motivation are more important than the character of the school. Using a complex analytic technique that includes sophisticated mathematical models, Greeley demonstrates that the preponderance of evidence tilts in favor of the school. There appears to be an authentic Catholic school effect, attributable to religious order ownership of some schools, more regular discipline in the schools, and especially to a higher quality of teaching in such schools. The effect of Catholic secondary schools on minority students does not occur among students from well-educated families who have been successful in their previous education experiences, but rather among students disadvantaged by race, the fact that their parents did not attend college, and by their own previous educational experiences. As these schools were originally established at the beginning of the twentieth century to socialize the children of the urban poor, their present success with today's urban poor may be due to the fact that these schools are simply doing what they have always done. In a preface written for this new, paperback edition of Catholic High Schools and Minority Students, Greeley confirms the continued success of Catholic schools based on recent studies, despite dissenting voices who wish to attack both private and religious educational institutions. This is an important contribution to the debate on the future of the education of young people in the United States.