Andrew Greeley Quotes & Sayings

It is possible to begin again. It is hard, and we never do it perfectly, but it can be done. — Andrew Greeley

I don't think Jesus was an exclusivist. He said, and we believe, that He is the unique representation of God in the world. But that doesn't mean this is the only way God can work. — Andrew Greeley

The kernel is the belief that God is love and, in Catholicism, God's love is present in the world. It is in the sacraments, in the Eucharist, in our families, in our friends, in our neighborhood, and forgiveness in the touch of a friendly hand, in a rediscovered love God is there. — Andrew Greeley

Well, religion has been passed down through the years by stories people tell around the campfire. Stories about God, stories about love. Stories about good spirits and evil spirits. — Andrew Greeley

The Catholic men are more upset about women not being able to be priests than are Catholic women. — Andrew Greeley

There is an electricity about a friendship relationship. We are both more relaxed and more sensitive, more creative and more reflective, more energetic and more casual, more excited and more serene. It is as though when we come in contact with our friend we enter into a different environment. — Andrew Greeley

One cannot escape the harsh fact that as a ministerial profession, the priesthood has very serious problems. They are not new. They did not develop yesterday or last year. — Andrew Greeley

People came into the Church in the Roman Empire because the Church was so good-Catholics were so good to one another, and they were so good to pagans, too. High-pressure evangelization strikes me as an attempt to deprive people of their freedom of choice. — Andrew Greeley

The leadership lost its nerve. Instead of taking the lead in the reform movement ... they pulled the plug on it. They tried and are still trying to return the church to the dry ice of the previous century and a half. — Andrew Greeley

Practically speaking, your religion is the story you tell about your life. — Andrew Greeley

As the criminal, sinful war in Iraq enters its third year, the president goes to Europe to heal the wounds between the United States and its former allies, on his own terms of course. — Andrew Greeley

It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us. — Andrew Greeley

There is good news in the data the strongest support for priests is to be found among the younger generation. — Andrew Greeley

Yet, if the most frequent sex and apparently the best sex is that between married partners who are faithful to one another, is there not a hint that affection might be an important aspect of sex? Even love? — Andrew Greeley

Everyone takes surveys. Whoever makes a statement about human behavior has engaged in a survey of some sort. — Andrew Greeley

I think the real problem for American religion are those minority of fundamentalists who try to identify political policies with religion. — Andrew Greeley

I have to say that I have no regrets about my decision to become a priest or about the major directions my ministry has taken me ... I have been and am happy as a priest, and I have never been lonely ... I could have used a bit more solitude. — Andrew Greeley

If we get you in the early years of your life and we fill your head with all of the Catholic stories, then it's very hard for you to stop being Catholic. Catholics are Catholics because they like being Catholic. — Andrew Greeley

Priest organizations around the country, both local and national, should realize that their membership has a serious image problem and undertake programs to improve it. — Andrew Greeley

Nobody puts constraints on God. She doesn't like it. — Andrew Greeley

If there is not laughter in intimacy, it becomes heavy, burdensome, and dull. At my best moments, the love dialogue I try to carry on with You each day is comic-what could be more comic than a human addressing the Ground of Being as an intimate? It's a kind of blasphemy that I dare because you have called for it, and that is pretty humorous, too. — Andrew Greeley

I think the only kind of acceptable evangelization is the evangelization of good example. — Andrew Greeley

Survey data suggest that war has become more unpopular. The majority of the American people now think it was a mistake, in a shift away from the 51 percent that endorsed it on Election Day. Admittedly this is only a small change in the population, from a majority to a minority. Nor do the changers earn grace for their new opinions. They still endorsed the war on Election Day and are still responsible for it. — Andrew Greeley

I have terrible handwriting. I now say it's a learning disability ... but a nun who was a very troubled woman hit me over the fingers with a ruler because my writing was so bad. — Andrew Greeley

There has always been a certain proportion of people who leave the Church on issues of authority and sex. That hasn't changed since we started doing research on it back in the early 1960s. — Andrew Greeley

In God, the characteristics of men and women that we admire in men and women are combined. That's been a traditional Catholic teaching that God is the combination of opposites. — Andrew Greeley

I think that the core doctrines of Christianity - the incarnation, the resurrection, life after death-these are as strong as ever. In fact, the belief in life after death has increased in this century. — Andrew Greeley

We're given second chances every day of our life. We don't usually take them, but they're there for the taking. — Andrew Greeley

An adolescent is somebody who is in between things. A teenager is somebody who's kind of permanently there. And so living with them through the various teenage hopes and sorrows and joys was curiously enough a maturing experience for me. — Andrew Greeley

You're a Catholic in Italy when you're born, it's unthinkable to stop being Catholic. You just take the rules a lot more seriously, because it pervades your culture. — Andrew Greeley

My songs will pass and be forgotten. What counts, however, is that I sang them. — Andrew Greeley

It is also asserted that the election settled the matters of the war and the torture of prisoners. These are dead issues that no longer need be addressed. — Andrew Greeley

I wouldn't say the world is my parish, but my readers are my parish. And especially the readers that write to me. They're my parish. And it's a responsibility that I enjoy. — Andrew Greeley

Since the end of the World War II, the United States has fought three "small" wars ... we lost all three of them and for the same reason-hubris. — Andrew Greeley

It was generally believed that Catholics were not interested in arts and science graduate schools. They weren't going to be intellectuals. And so I put the theses to the test. And they all collapsed. — Andrew Greeley

Two studies from the year 2000, however, indicate that Catholics give lower ratings to their clergy's ministerial activities across the board than do Protestants. — Andrew Greeley

God draws straight with crooked lines. — Andrew Greeley

Is the patience of the American people that long suffering? Is there no outrage left in the country? — Andrew Greeley

Angels are wonderful and exciting, and they have the appeal of beings who will take care of us and manifest God's personal concern. — Andrew Greeley

Search for the perfect church if you will; when you find it, join it, and realize that on that day it becomes something less than perfect. — Andrew Greeley

I write easily, let's put it that way. And in a novel particularly, the characters take over. And they tell me what to say and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm a third of the way into a novel and then I just let the characters finish it for me. — Andrew Greeley

Angels represent God's personal care for each one of us. — Andrew Greeley

The men who were running the church in the late '60s and '70s panicked when they saw the chaos, which developed after the council. The relatively modest changes of those years thawed the ice in which Catholicism had been frozen since the French Revolution. — Andrew Greeley

Note the three most important Cabinet positions. Rice said that it was better to find the weapons of mass destruction than to see a mushroom cloud. — Andrew Greeley

Would it not be much better to have a president who deliberately lied to the people because he thought a war was essential than to have one who was so dumb as to be taken in by intelligence agencies, especially those who told him what he wanted to hear? — Andrew Greeley