Andrew Greeley -- priest, author, critic -- dead at 85

[n2doc]

By Trevor Jensen and Margaret Ramirez
Chicago Tribune
9:47 a.m. CDT, May 30, 2013

Rev. Andrew Greeley, the outspoken Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and sociologist known for his deeply researched academic appraisals and sometimes scathing critiques of his church, died Wednesday night, several years after fracturing his skull in a freakish fall in Rosemont.

Rev. Greeley died in his sleep at his apartment at the John Hancock Center, according to his spokeswoman, June Rosner. He was 85.

Rosner said Rev. Greeley had been in poor health since an accident on Nov. 7, 2008. He was at Advocate Lutheran General Medical Center when a piece of his clothing apparently got caught in the door of a departing taxi and he was thrown to the pavement.

The family released a statement this morning saying "our lives have been tremendously enriched by having the presence of Fr. Andrew Greeley in our family. First and foremost as a loving uncle who was always there for us with unfailing support or with a gentle nudge, who shared with us both the little things and the big moments of family life.

"But we were specially graced that this man was also an amazing priest who recently celebrated the 59th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood. He served the Church all those years with a prophetic voice and with unfailing dedication, and the Church he and our parents taught us to love is a better place because of him. Our hearts are heavy with grief, but we find hope in the promise of Heaven that our uncle spent his life proclaiming to us, his friends, his parishioners and his many fans. He resides now with the Lord of the Dance, and that dance will go on."

more

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-andrew-greeley-dead-20130530,0,3667800.story

[el_bryanto]

1. I quite liked a few of his novels. nt

[niyad]

2. requiescat in pacem

[The Magistrate]

3. He Was A God Man, Sir

[hrmjustin]

4. May he rest in peace and rise in glory!

Loved his work!

[antigop]

5. America's Disease is Greed, by Andrew Greeley

An excellent piece

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0820-09.htm

The most serious spiritual problem in the country today is reckless and untrammeled greed. Greed caused the disgraceful corporate scandals that fill our newspapers. Greed is responsible for crooked cops and crooked politicians. Greed causes the constant efforts to destroy unions that protect basic worker rights.

Greed has produced rash tax cuts that have given money to the rich and in effect taken it away from the poor. Greed has led to the immigration policy in which hundreds of poor men and women die every year as they struggle across the desert for the jobs that el norte promises them. Greed accounts for the efforts to take profitability out of the pensions and health insurance of working men and women. Greed is responsible for the fact that so many Americans have no health insurance and the fact that the recent reform of Medicare was a fraud. Greed causes newspapers to overestimate their circulation.

Greed is responsible for the obscene salaries of CEOs. In the '90s the ratio of CEO compensation to average workers' compensation was 250 to 1, meaning that the boss earned on his first day of work during a year as much as the worker did in a whole year. In European countries the ratio is closer to 100 to 1. Recent estimates put the current ratio at 500 to 1 -- the boss makes as much before lunch as the worker does all year. Greed is the cause of the high wages paid to the bosses even if the company is failing.

Greed is responsible for the endless stress and ruthless competition of the workplace and the strains and tensions of professional class marriages. Greed (in this instance another name for relentless ambition) explains much of the cheating on college campuses. Greed is responsible for outsourcing, which is incapable of comprehending that the employees who lose their jobs are also the consumers who sustain the economy. Greed generates the reckless ventures that in part caused the bubble of the late '90s. Greed causes expensive wars that shatter the budget. Greed is the reason that only the wealthy are benefitting so far from the economic upturn that is allegedly happening. Greed drives loan sharks. Greed is responsible for the success of big box stores that tax the poor with low wages to provide bargains for affluent suburban shoppers. Greed is the reason poor white Appalachians, poor African Americans and poor Native Americans must fight the wars that the wealthy start. Jessica Lynch joined the Army so she could go to college. Her Native American roommate, killed in action, joined so, single mother that she was, she could support her children. Greed is the reason why the country is being run by those whom the president has described, however inelegantly, as the ''haves and the have mores.''

No one said during the bizarre deification of President Reagan that he taught us that greed is good and that we should feel good about our greedy country. Greed is the reason that the country is being run by the insurance, pharmaceutical, weapons and petroleum industries. Greed causes worldwide sex slavery of women and children.

[joeybee12]

6. It is excellent...RIP Fr. Greeley

[Kurovski]

7. intelligence and compassion together in one mind and heart.

A true loss for a church that itself seems so lost in this new century.

[Octafish]

8. Fr. Greeley pegged War Inc.

Lying's Just the Tip of the Iceberg

by Andrew Greely
Published on Friday, November 4, 2005 by the Chicago Sun Times

Since it is apparently not a crime to deceive the American people into supporting a foolish and unjust war, one must be content with the indictment of I. Lewis Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice. The indictment is an example of a mountain laboring two years to bring forth a molehill. Libby will have the best trial lawyers money can buy and stands a good chance of acquittal. If he is convicted, the president will surely grant him a pardon before he leaves office.

We are unlikely ever to learn who ''outed'' Valerie Plame and thus ruined her career. That the leak came from a cabal inside the White House has been evident for a long time. But if the special prosecutor was unable after two years of effort to find out the who-how-and-why of this gratuitous and vicious mischief, the historians of the future might not be able to tease out the truth. They might observe, however, that the scandal was proof of how far down the path of evil the Bush administration would go to defend their case for a war that has turned out to be foolish and unjust.

Did the president know what was going on? It is hard to believe that he did not -- any more than President Ronald Reagan was unaware of the Iran-contra deal. Libby's clumsy lies -- attributing the ''leak'' about a CIA agent to journalists -- were probably an attempt to protect the vice president, who is far too clever to be caught in any legal trap. Yet we know enough now to understand that the Iraq war is his war. He and the crowd of neo-conservatives around him and the secretary of defense planned the war even before the president defeated Sen. Al Gore (if he really did). They even tried to blame the World Trade Center attack on Iraq. A democratic Iraq, they argued, would transform the balance of power in the Middle East. The way to Jerusalem, they claimed, was through Baghdad.

Cheney proclaimed to the bitter end that weapons of mass destruction would eventually be found in Iraq and has never retracted or apologized for this claim, which was decisive in winning support for the war from the American people. More recently, he has claimed that the Iraqi insurrection (better called, perhaps, the Iraqi resistance) was in its ''last throes,'' despite overwhelming evidence that it grows ever stronger. Is he lying, or is he the kind of true believer who sees the world differently than everyone else?

Who knows what the answer is to that question? In truth, it does not matter. The Bush administration, led by the vice president, systematically deceived the American people about the war and continues to do so. There were never any nuclear weapons, never any raw uranium, never any Iraqi involvement in the World Trade Center attack. The Iraq war was never part of a ''war on terrorism.''

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1104-33.htm

[antigop]

10. He was a great man who will be missed. nt

e

[Cleita]

9. I first picked up "The Cardinal Sins" in a bookstore I was working in when

it was first released. Since I was raised Catholic, it piqued my curiosity. (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/612567.The_Cardinal_Sins)I passed it on to my Irish husband, who passed it on to his Irish friends. It was quite a subject of discussion among those Irish Catholics, who were both shocked and pleased with the honesty that this priest turned author wrote his story.

RIP Father Greeley.

[hedgehog]

11. It is sad his voice was silenced so early by a freakish accident -

I suspect he won't rest in peace because he'll still be working hard in Heaven!

In a statement, his family said their lives “have been tremendously enriched by having the presence of Fr. Andrew Greeley in our family.”

“He served the Church all those years with a prophetic voice and with unfailing dedication, and the Church he and our parents taught us to love is a better place because of him. Our hearts are heavy with grief, but we find hope in the promise of Heaven that our uncle spent his life proclaiming to us, his friends, his parishioners and his many fans. He resides now with the Lord of the Dance, and that dance will go on.”

http://www.andysword.com/archives/788