Furthermore! Memories Of A Parish Priest

Furthermore! Memories Of A Parish Priest

Product Description The best-selling novelist and Catholic priest shares his memories of life as a parish priest, his involvement in church politics and important contemporary issues, and his thoughts on the people he has met along the way, in the sequel to Confessions of a Parish Priest. 50,000 first printing. Tour. Amazon.com Review Popular novel writer Andrew Greeley returns to the voice of memoirist in this update of his feisty original autobiography, Confessions of a Parish Priest. Greeley is the first to admit how controversial he is. Religious purists attack his fiction as slanderous and racy. Even more divisive is Greeleys open criticism of the Catholic Church, including his denouncing of other priests for failing to handle the rampant pedophilia problem. Although Greeley is not flip or defensive when confronting his critics, he does make it clear that he is a man with a mission, and he will not be stopped from writing fiction or speaking his truth. In his chapter titled Pedophile Problems, he brazenly writes, Nothing has made me feel more contemptuous of my fellow priests--both as individuals and as collectives--than their response to the pedophile crisis.... The bishops in a way are worse.... After blaming the media for the problem, they set up a committee to study the problem, to make a report, and issue vague and feeble guidelines. This is the kind of strong writing one can expect from this highly opinionated (and highly admired) man of words and cloth. Arranged as a collection of essays, fans will find plenty of fresh material in this memoir, including chapters about Prayers, Catholic Schools, The End of the Confident Church, and Why They Stay--Its the Stories! --Gail Hudson From Publishers Weekly Greeley offers Furthermore! as a companion volume to Confessions of a Parish Priest, the autobiography he published 15 years ago. Greeley styles his latest work as a self-evaluation of his careers as novelist, sociologist and priest. His narrative of the salient events that shaped his character is particularly concerned with the upheavals in American Catholicism from the 1950s to the present. Greeley asserts that the Confident Church of the 1950s was basically sound in the fundamentals of its doctrine but lacked the requisite depth and substance to face the social crises of the 1960s and 1970s. He finds the contemporary Confusing Church more chaotic but less shallow than the Catholicism of the first half of the century. This Confusing Church is characterized by competing authoritarian impulses, including hierarchical traditionalism, and a lay liberalism that scorns any judgment but its own. This vivid portrait of late-twentieth-century Catholicism is short on cogent analysis. Greeley lays responsibility for the Churchs flaws fully at the doorstep of the Vatican, including lay intransigence and the miserable state of art and architecture in American churches. While claiming objectivity, Greeley seems decidedly uninterested in the stories of Catholics who are faithful to Church teachings. (Dec.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal This volume covers Greeleys life in the 15 years since the publication of his first memoirs, Confessions of a Parish Priest. A novelist who has had ten books on the New York Times best-sellers list and a practicing Catholic priest on staff at the National Opinion Research Center, Greeley has regularly received both acclaim and criticism. Greeleys confidence, compassion, and the many reverent and not so reverent thoughts expressed here are sure to keep the reader paging through the book. Whether youre a fan of his fiction or interested in his sharp insights into the Churchs turbulent times in the last half of this century, Greeley (now 70) will continue to intrigue. Recommended for libraries carrying his novels and for those staying current in contemporary religious criticism.ALeroy Hommerding,