Andrew Greeley, Inc.

"What is Andrew Greeley, anyway?" asked bewildered Theologian Tom Driver in a recent issue of America. "It might be a syndicate," he suggested. Dan Herr, president of Chicago's Thomas More Press, says, "I used to think there were four Greeleys. I was wrong. There are more than that."

There indeed seem to be. The Rev. Andrew Greeley is, among other people, a Roman Catholic priest, a sociologist, a theologian, a weekly columnist (50 U.S. Catholic newspapers), the author of 40-odd books and, of late, a celibate sex expert. He is an informational machine gun who can fire off an article on Jesus to the New York Times Magazine, on ethnic groups to the Antioch Review, and on war to Dissent. This year he will write his first novel--about Chicago's Irish. "He's obsessive, compulsive, a workaholic," says Psychologist-Priest Eugene Kennedy, a close friend. "He's a natural resource. He should be protected under an ecological act."

He also happens to be, as Kennedy puts it, "the Howard Cosell of the Catholic Church,"--referring to Greeley's capacity for stirring up both tempers and controversy. Greeley concedes that he wields a "kinky Irish tongue" against all sorts of holy cows and causes. He has put down Radical Jesuit Daniel Berrigan ("As a political strategist, he's a great poet"), and he has told Roman Catholic prelates that "the present leadership of the church is morally, intellectually and religiously bankrupt."

Surprised Husband. Greeley has solid credentials as a scholar. Program director of the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, he has written numerous books and articles based on its surveys. Perhaps his best sociological work is a 1966 study called The Education of Catholic Americans, co-authored by Sociologist Peter H. Rossi, which compares the effects of religious v. public schooling on students' future lives as Catholics.

Greeley also produces a flood of popular works. In the past three months, he has published three new books. Building Coalition: American Politics in the 70s (New Viewpoints) is what Greeley calls "unsolicited advice to the Democratic Party on how to put itself back together." Sexual Intimacy (Thomas More Press) is a priest's enthusiastic endorsement of inventive marital sex play. A chapter on "How to Be Sexy" envisages a wife surprising her husband "in the library . . . wearing only panties and a martini pitcher." One right-wing Catholic columnist declared that even discussing the book would be an occasion of sin. (Greeley promptly started a sequel.) The New Agenda (Doubleday) may be Greeley's best theological work to date. It is a thoughtful pastoral prescription for a changing church, which, however, insists that basic Christian concepts--the Resurrection, a Saviour, God's fidelity--are still valid answers to modern man's anxieties. Says Eugene Kennedy: "Greeley is a progressive centrist. He defends the church while trying to move it forward."

Greeley's writing nevertheless has given him some problems lately. Last year, after ten years as lecturer in sociology at the University of Chicago and eight futile attempts to win faculty appointment, Greeley left the university, charging it with anticlericalism. Critics counter that Greeley has simply spread himself too thin as a popular writer to warrant professorial tenure.

The priest's most painful trouble comes to a head this month in a face-off with Chicago's lordly John Cardinal Cody. When Greeley tried recently to return part-time to parish work ("I am still very much a neighborhood type of priest"), the cardinal blocked a routine request for his transfer to a parish until Greeley comes to see him. Greeley has not done so, claiming that Cody might use his request for parish duties as a pretext for calling him entirely away from his scholarship and journalism.

A lifelong Chicagoan, Greeley, at 45, feels like an outcast from the city's academia and his diocese. Perhaps too melodramatically, given his loyal circle of friends, he sees himself as a "lonely" and "marginal" priest. But he hardly seems forlorn. In warm months, he shuttles in his Volkswagen between his gloomy Victorian room in the city and a rambling old beach house in Grand Beach, Mich., where he keeps a small sailboat, scuba gear and water skis. Beyond that, there is the puckish Greeley to cheer the melancholy Greeley up: "The only time I really feel lonely is when I leave Johnny Carson on for more than ten minutes."

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