Customer Reviews

White Smoke

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is one of those books that after you've read it, you can't tell if it was worth your time or not.

I learned a bit about the Papal election process, and I learned a LOT about what a particular part of the priesthood thinks about the current and previous Popes.

However, as other reviewers have noted, the characterization is paper thin, the plotting is silly, the "bad guys" in the Roman curia are mainly faceless and without redemption, and the "good guys" are completely without fault. I'd go further to add that the bias shown by the supposedly objective reporters in the novel is so severe that the characters cease to be believable in their own right, and become "mouthpieces" for the author.

Now, for fans of Greeley, I'm sure this will be a satisfying read... For those neutral to his particular style, (and it can get really thick, particularly the dialogue) I suspect it might not be. Before I picked up "White Smoke", the last time I read a Greeley novel was over 12 years ago. I liked that book. I don't much care for this one.

This was the first Andrew Greeley novel I've read, and I found it more than a little disappointing. There are effectively two levels of characterization here: All the "bad" guys are cardboard caricatures and all the "good" guys are self-portraits. Not a single idea here that he didn't better develop in his non-fiction writing. If you're looking for good Pope fiction, I'd suggest any of the Morris West novels instead.

This book de-evolves into a manifesto of what Greeley would like to see in the next Pope. It's almost the author's fantasy scenario about extreme liberalism coming to dominance in the Catholic Church, right down to a Spanish Pope who wears business suits and who used to be a married husband and father. This far-fetched novel has so little material on which to construct a plot that Greeley concocts a love story around his Papal election politics. There is a reconciliation of a married couple on the outs, and a half-hearted aside into a secondary plotline about a man who wants to murder the next Pope. Oh, and Father Greeley drags his favorite Chicago Cardinal into the book to fill more pages and gives the poor old man a life and death personal crisis. This soap opera could have been a good short story but it's a dismal novel. Virgin And Martyr and Angels of September are better books by Andrew Greeley, and a few of the Blackie Ryan mysteries are fun, but White Smoke is a clunker.

Yes, I read it through to the end - but, while the premise may have been fascinating, the plot was dreadful.

Vatican politics are as old as the Church, but the absurd vision of a situation where a handful of radical conservatives are depicted as having no redeeming qualities, yet the entire balance of the Church is eagre to support one candidate for the papacy, is beyond belief.

If ecclesiastical politics are as old as Christianity, sex is as old as Adam. Perhaps Father Greeley could remember this, and stop creating characters who seem to think they invented it.

Filled with lots of details about the process of choosing a new Pope this novel is an exciting fast paced read. It also sets out the challenges facing the modern catholic church.

While the recent conclave did not elect a 'liberal' Pope as Greeley had put forward in this novel we are left with a clearer understanding of the political forces within the church.

This is my first Greeley novel and I will certainly now read others.

His characters are lightly sketched and rather flat.He is,however, a great storyteller. I got quite caught up in the action though I could see where the novel was headed.

I would recommend this novel for anyone wanting a perspective on the Catholic Church today.

I write this as an Asian Catholic layperson.

Andrew Greeley uses a mystery genre to express his thoughts on some of the changes - and non-changes in the Catholic Church since end of the great Ecumenical Council, Vatican II. If we allow an author's licence for this genre, I'd say he expresses the view of an American priest pretty well while managing to entertain his readers in this genre.

I like the fact that he commented upon the fact that many of the hopes of the ordinary laity - and large sections of the clergy - for a more participatory Church have still to be realised several decades after the end of the great Ecumenical Council of the sixties; that John Paul II and the over-dominating Curia needs to find a more acceptable middle-ground than it has done since 1968. We find the centralised control from the Vatican very stifling.

Greeley has done a pretty good job - it seems to me - of illustrating and contrasting the conservative elements - typified by the shadowy 'Corpus Christi' - with liberal groups.

In typical light-hearted Greeley style, he brings out the differences between customary practices and true Catholic faith. Dogma with a light touch, I'd call it.

More power to your arm, Fr Greeley

In the introduction to this "novel," Father Greeley, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago and pop sociologist who teaches at the University of Chicago and the University of Arizona, implores his readers not to mistake any of his characters for real-life people. And for good reason. Several of Fr. Greeley's characters bear striking resemblence to real-life personalities. Cardinal Menendez, Fr. Greeley's "progressive" hero whom holds all the politically correct opinions required of a modern hero, resembles Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, the real-life Archbishop of Milan, who like his literary incarnation is the hero of the worldwide media. (A fawning piece in the august Economist magazine of London recently appeared, heralding the Milanese cardinal as ushering in a new Catholicism for a new Europe: Politically centralized; morally decentralized!) Fr. Greeley's villains -- and make no mistake about it, they are not merely his opponents but his enemeies -- are equally transparent. An African cardinal, named Valerian, could easily be the traditionalists Bernardin Cardinal Gantin of Benin or Francis Cardinal Arinze, both of who serve in Fr. Greeley's hated Roman Curia (the central offices of the Church) and are frequently mentioned as successors to our real-life Slavic Pope.

The traditionalists, uniformly stupid or evil in Fr. Greeley's reckoning, struggle vainly to stop the Menendez juggernaught. But their efforts are easily batted down by Cardinal Cronin of Chicago, presumably Fr. Greeley's stand-in for the (real-life) late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago. The eminence grise behind the Eminence is a certain Bishop Blackie Ryan who, working hand-in-glove with a husband and wife team from the New York Times and CNN, masterfully, almost effortlessly, thwarts all efforts to deny Cardinal Menendez, a widower from Spain, the papal throne. Bishop Ryan's machinations appear effortless because Fr. Greeley never allows any real or substantial or prolonged threat arise to his hero, a! nd for a reason: Fr. Greeley is too close to his hero and what he represents; the battle for him to too real to permit any real doubt, any convincing drama, to shadow the chances of Cardinal Menendez.

And so Fr. Greeley's novel is as flat and predictable as the American High Plains -- although, to be fair, the people you meet in Kansas and Nebraska are more companionable. Blackie (Bishop Ryan), for instance, reveals himself as a full-thoated hater of Rome. To read his first-hand description of St. Peter's is to be in the company of a man with a deep revulsion for the Church of which is a leader. And Milford Cronin, the Grand Elector of the Conclave, describes his vernerable brothers in the Sacred College in terms that I will not reproduce here; his nicer comments are that the other Cardinals are morons. Another of Fr. Greeley's heros, the NYT correspondent, says that the delegates to any Democratic National Convention would inspire more confidence than the Sacred College. At one point the sly feigns and clever, distracting formulations of Cardinal Menendez bear so patent a resemblence to President Bill Clinton's that Fr. Greeley is moved to have one character remark that the last thing the Church needs is the pontificate of William Jefferson I. That Fr. Greeley puts this remark in the mouth of one of his villains (i.e., a tradionalist who, by Fr. Greeley's lights, is by definition a idiot) indicates his approval of the advent of a new Clintonesque style to papal addresses.

In any event, Fr. Greeley would have been better advised to write a non-fiction book about the next papal conclave, along the lines of "The Next Pope," a recent book by a British ex-Jesuit who took up cudgels against John Paul long ago. In doing so, Fr. Greeley could have dispensed with any literary pretense and produced a tome that corresponds with his well-known opinions. However much one may have disagreed with him, that book could help but be a better read than "White Smoke."

Let's make something clear. I am 67, a former member of the Anglican (Episcopalian) Church, and no longer a member of any Church Group. I am a Conservative in life, and a traditionalist by nature. I have always been impressed by the fact that the Roman Catholic Church has through its long history managed to hold to some fundamental beliefs and Creeds in spite of all attempts by the Euroweenies, and their left wing US counterparts to push the organisation over a cliff into wimpish and "me now" mentality.
Greely writes fondly of that mealy mouthed, crypto-liberal,Mafia related mess of humanity which is Chicago. Its politics, its gangsters,its believe nothing priesthood,and their plan to install the ultimate in worthless Cardinals to the highest position in Church dogma.
Read it by all means, but make sure there are no obstructions between you and the fire. If you get past page 176 without destroying it, you are wonderful. And a member of the same bunch of losers so much appreciated by that limp and pallid author Greeley.

I enjoyed most of the book, but would have appreciated it if Mr. Greeley's editor would have reworked the book a little. It really dragged on occasion and his all white or all black characters could have been nuanced for the readers sake. There are so few Catholic writers out there that I will buy and read anything he puts out I'm afraid, but I think there is a new star rising on the Catholic author podium. I recently finished "A Force of Habit" It has suspense, mystery, and characters who breathe. Spend more time on your next book, Mr. Greeley, but DO keep them coming!

This may be one of the better novels of papal election I have read in a while (except Hadrian VII by FW Rolfe), but it suffers from Catholic moralizing and a sycophantic fascination with the Roman class system. The inevitability of the plot and the predictability of the characterization may draw the reader on, but for all the wrong reasons. Nonetheless, there are some pretty set pieces and the atmosphere of a conclave will of itself always cast a spell.