Looking Back: A Sociologist and the Church

Looking Back: A Sociologist and the Church Andrew Greeley “I’d do it all again.” —Spencer Tracy as Frank Skeffington in The Last Hurrah Introduction As the years roll on and one seeks to draw smidgens of wisdom from reflection on life experiences, one seeks out patterns of events in the successes and failures, joys and sorrows, triumphs and frustrations, hopes and disappointments which have marked a large number of decades. In this mini-memoir, I will try to reflect on my experiences as a sociologist in service of the Church. In summary I found the sociology fascinating and rewarding. As far as the service of the Church, I should have stayed home. The Church did not need a sociologist and in fact did not want one. Not only did the hierarchy and the clergy know all they needed to know about the Catholic condition so did the intellectual and quasi intellectual laity on the fringes of the institution—academics , intellectuals (such as these may have been), editors, commentators, reporters, and experts of one variety or the other. In this respect the Church differs little from other human institutions that, while they take refuge in “studies,” don’t like them very much. Who needs a sociologist who reports facts when you already know what the facts are and that the sociologist, should he report different facts, is wrong? I know that now, but I didn’t know it when I started as a sociologist. Hence I was astonished by the reaction to my work, even when it presented what I thought was good news—Catholics can become intellectuals, Catholic schools work, one cannot drive American Catholics out of the Church, most priests are happy in their work. Despite the good news, my own archdiocese has never asked me to do research or to comment on my field of expertise—Catholic education. I have directed only one study sponsored by the national hierarchy and that became a disaster for all concerned , never to be repeated, though it contained considerable good news. Some of the resistance to and dismissal of my sociology must be attributed to my own personality. In grammar school, I was called a “walking encyclopedia,” at the 1 University of Chicago, “nothing but a loud-mouth Irish priest,” by my fellow priests one “who never had an unpublished thought,” and more recently by colleagues as one “who writes the book even before he sees the data.”1 I am a smart aleck, in other words, and a glib smart aleck who can be dangerously humorous and even pugnacious when someone tries to put him down. All of these comments are ad hominem, they say nothing about the substance of one’s work. However, they are effective in the rhetoric of controversy. And it is the rhetoric of controversy to which the sociologist must answer, especially when he intrudes in the public square with findings that might have policy implications. In the final analysis he can’t win. Better, like I say, that he stay home and sip ice tea or Baileys Irish Cream and take an afternoon nap. In the long run, the objectivity of some of his findings might be conceded but, as Lord Keynes once remarked, in the long run we are all dead. In addition to all the other problems, there was (and is) among Catholics an uncertainty about what sociology is. Some clerics and hierarchs contend, doubtless in good faith, that it is the proper purpose of sociology to report what situations should be and not what they are. We do not need to be told that the laity disagree on birth control, but only that the laity are following the birth control teachings. If they weren’t, then they were not really good Catholics. Sociological findings are valid only when approved by church leadership. Moreover, sociologists are not theologians, and they have nothing to contribute to theological discussions. Finally, as priests often tell me, my findings are personal opinions no better than their own personal opinions or experiences. The late Joseph Fichter, S.J., would say in response to such arguments, “Well, I got a thousand cases which say you’re wrong!” Thus my...