98 - The Catholic Myth: The Behavior and Beliefs of American Catholics

Yhe Catholic Myth: The Behavior and Beliefs of American Catholics

By Andrew M. Greeley

New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990. 322 Pp. $21.95.

Since Andrew Greeley's The American Catholic: A Social Portrait went out of print, we have needed a new and updated Greeley vade mecum, the distillation of his many volumes of sociological research and theory about American Catholicism in one tome. The Catholic Myth is that vintage Greeley volume.

It is all there: the evidence about Catholic schools (they do a better job of educating because they create social capital which draws on all of the resources: parents, teachers, and students in the life of the school. Their graduates give more to the church and feel closer to Catholicism); priests (they have a strong morale problem among themselves but are no less valued than before by the laity); parishes (the quality of preaching makes all the difference to Catholic commitment); practice (Catholic mass practice declined precipitously because of negative reactions to Humanae Vitae and, then, leveled off in the mid-1970s because of a factor of loyalty to the Catholic tradition);

99 - The Catholic Myth: The Behavior and Beliefs of American Catholics

Catholic giving (it is an isotope of anger such that Catholics who are well placed economically give less than half to the church than do Protestants or Jews).

Even if you have read all of Greeley (or most of him, since who could read all of his many volumes), this is a lively, feisty read, chock full of data (but with no obtrusive sociological tables or abstruse mathematical arguments as in his more elegant professional sociological articles) and counter-intuitive information.

The basic story line of the book is that Catholics stay in their church, even when they selectively disobey certain norms about sexuality and authority, because they like being Catholic. The rates of defection from Catholicism have remained almost stable since 1960. Catholics like their tradition since it helps them to imagine differently. They imagine the human community, from family on up, with somewhat different pictures than do other Americans.

The heart of the Catholic imagination lies not in rules or sexual proscriptions but in what Greeley calls the sacramental imagination, that is, God is lurking in human relationships, in human and local institutions, with warm, enabling graces that provide hope. Amazingly, Greeley asserts "the way you picture God will affect the way you vote."

If you want a readable, brash, and lively story line about who American Catholics are, how they vote, and how they think about God, sexuality, marriage, family, Mary, the priesthood, this is your book. Some readers of Greeley will be turned off by his unnuanced Peck's bad-boy attack on all bishops, most priests, and most Catholic intellectuals as fools (I was), but if you let him get away with being outrageously feisty on these points without letting your irritation turn him off, you will learn much of value and nuance about a distinctive Catholic religious imagination. Greeley has been able to tap an important area of sociological research-the differential religious imagination-which has great pay-off not only in predicting behavior but in understanding religious difference.

A one-man sociological research institute, Greeley will charm most of his readers into delight with "The Catholic instinct that God lurks everywhere and that we must find his self-disclosure wherever we can." Most amazing among his findings is the importance of warm feelings toward God for sexual satisfaction in marriage and the ways feminism is an asset to a happy marriage. Catholics may complain about their institution and its leaders and regale others with the authoritarian horror stories, but they do not leave because they love the Catholic way of imagining life and its challenges and possibilities. I plan to use this book in my sociology of religion classes since nowhere else in one volume can you find the essential Greeley reporting his thirty years of research.

JOHN A. COLEMAN, S.J.

Graduate Theological Union
Berkeley, California