Father Andrew Greeley - A Voice of Reason in the Catholic Church

Father Andrew Greeley passed away yesterday.  I am not sure how many are familiar with him, but he is an interesting character who played an important role in the Catholic church in the last half of the twentieth centuries.  To me, he is a reminder that religion does not require prudishness, that the ecclesiastical polity is not sacrosanct simply because it is ecclesiastical, and that ethical conviction flouts dogma at every turn.  An apt summary of Father Greeley's beliefs are summarized in his New York Times obituary:

Before religion became creed or catechism, he said, it was poetry: images and stories that defy death with glimpses of hope, and with moments of life-renewing experience that were shared and enacted in communal rituals. 

“The theological voice wants doctrines, creeds and moral obligations,” Father Greeley wrote. “I reject none of these. I merely insist that experiences which renew hope are prior to and richer than propositional and ethical religion and provide the raw power for them.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/us/andrew-m-greeley-outspoken-priest-dies-at-85.html?pagewanted=1&hpw

 The obituary is worth reading in its entirety to get a more complete picture of the man.  Noteworthy to me is that Father Greeley was an early advocate for investigating the crimes priests in the Catholic Church committed against children, punishing the offenders, and changing the organizational culture that allowed the criminal abuse to occur.  I was unaware that he contributed substantial funds to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) when it was just getting off the ground, demonstrating that Father Greeley understood that the strength of the Church as moral agent in the world requires transparency and contrition rather than opacity and misdirection.  All who share Father Greeley's conviction that "experiences which renew hope" are primary and form the nexus toward which all right behavior ought to be directed have lost a formidable and pugnacious ally.