Customer Reviews

The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council

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Pretty much boils down to the idea that (American) Catholics who stay "in" the church, do so "because they like being Catholic".

Which apparently means they like the familiar "American Catholic" culture or ethnicity (ethnicities: Irish, German, Polish) that they were born and raised in: the rituals, color, music, customs ("May crownings"). The vernacular language change they accept as good, the Vatican, medieval ethics and theology they ignore (and have been for decades.) Greeley himself comes from ethnic/cultural Catholicism with good music and colorful liturgies and customs, so he's got a good "born Catholic" culture to like.

But there's little here in this compendium/rehash of Greeley's previous writings to lead someone not born into one of those likeable traditions to turn to Catholicism, or of help to anyone who converted because of the attraction of Catholic theology and the Vatican II vision of Church despite the poverty and disfunction of a local Irish Catholic culture of minimal liturgical beauty (concentration on "validity" as good enough) and little or awful music and zero spiritual content. Or who now find themselves stuck in a parish with all the same (updated with awful music) and now overlaid with a return of authoritarian top down heavy handed management from the Vatican and local bishops, the rollback of the Vatican reforms, and the crackdowns on the least signs of life in intellectual life, particularly in Catholic institutions.

What was the "Revolution"? It is when Catholics openly decided not to "receive" (i.e. ratify with "religious assent") fiats from the hierarchy that they found unreasonable, unworkable, and out of touch with reality. The hierarchy still hasn't gotten the message that if the Church (the faithful) doesn't "receive" a teaching (i.e. the believers don't believe it), it can't reflect the "sense of the faithful" no matter how the Vatican invokes infallibility of either the ordinary or papal magisterium. The Vatican doesn't get it that they're function should be to express what the believers who are the Church believe, not tell them what they should believe based on some theoretical neo-scholastic theology and 13th century concepts that ignore everything humanity has learned about itself since.

Greeley's Catholics who stay because they like being Catholic are the ones the Revolution worked for because they've got a compatible or likeable Catholic cultural milieu to fit into. Those who don't, have little reason to stay.

Fr. Greeley has finally written a book that pretty well says it all, with the exception of one sentence. Hans Kung contrary to Fr.Greeley's opinion is "not" a celebrity theologian. Infact its uncanny how many of Fr.Greeley's observations resemble what Hans Kung has already written about in previous books, going back as far as the 80's.

In the 1960s, Andrew Greeley was often accused of never having had an unpublished thought. Following his inordinate number of novels, we can now add that he hasn't had an unpublished fantasy. This scattered and strangely dated book envisions a kind of fantasy revolution in an American Catholicism where lay people can be holier than priests (no kidding) even though most of them scoff at strictures against birth control and even abortion, where the biggest problem seems to be that someone removed the statues from the sanctuary of the parish church while failing to appreciate how movies like "Dogma" improve on 2,000 years of theological reflection. He seems to think it objectively true that guitar players are all terrible musicians (take THAT, Les Paul) while all organ players are virtuosos.

He has identified a class of Catholics called "liturgists," whose passionate aim is to strip worship of anything beautiful and everything ancient while replacing it with a pimply-faced folk singer thoroughly versed in his three guitar chords and three hundred heinous hymns which parishioners listen to because they are polite.

He does mention in passing that the new authoritarianism and dogmatism are having an effect but seems oblivious to the fact that those reactionary forces, the ones that elected our new Pope, are spiraling out of control as politicians are denied communion for upholding the law of the land and the priest-pedophile scandal is rapidly morphing into a combination cover-up and gay-bashing frenzy.

Greely is coming out with a book that purports to explain the mystery of the recent papal election. I hope his big issue is not the poor color coordination of Benedict XVI's liturgical vestments.