Chapter Ten:
A Church to Come Home To

From Eros and the Womanliness of God: Andrew Greeley's Romances of Renewal (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1986) 197-212. [The electronic version is based on my original manuscript and may differ slightly from the book chapter. Endnotes are not included.]

The Grail/Magic Princess represents both Woman God and the Church. Thus, Noele in Lord of the Dance, conceived at Easter and born at Christmas, is a symbol both for the relentlessly pursuing deity and the Church as the best she can be. Brigid, on the other hand, might be interpreted as the Church in her harlot incarnation, corrupt, manipulative, envious, willing to sell herself for profit and power, and yet spectacular and redeemable, for "Brigid," after all, is linked to "Bride." Nora, in Thy Brother's Wife who supports and "mothers" all those she touches is another obvious Church analogue,3 as is Eileen in The Patience of a Saint. The Grail/Communal Womb aspect of the Church as source, nourisher, and goal of the faithful appears in the indefatigable Ryan clan with its Madonna penchant for not only cherishing and protecting each and every member of the family but also adopting an assortment of needy strays, deserving or otherwise.

According the Catholic doctrine as restated in Lumen gentium of Vatican Two, "The origin and growth of the Church are symbolized by the blood and the water which flowed from the open side of the crucified Jesus (cf. Jn. 19-34),"4 a symbol also connected with the Grail. The Church is the "sole and necessary gate way to which is Christ (Jn. 10, 1-10), . . . a cultivated field, . . . the house of God, . . . the holy temple, . . . the Holy City."5 To reinforce those archetypes of femininity, the Church is called "a bride adorned for her husband (Apoc. 21:1f.) . . . the spotless spouse of the spotless lamb, ... 'our mother."6 In her identity as exile, "while on earth she journeys in a foreign land away from the Lord (cf. 2 Cor. 5:6),"7 and as such also represents the pilgrim on his/her way home. She "encompasses with her love all those who are afflicted by human misery, . . . [and], clasping sinners to her bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification, follows constantly the path of penance and renewal."8 She is compared to "the mystery of the incarnate Word."9 By being identified both with the Mystical Body of Christ, "a single mystical person,"10 and His Bride, she is envisioned primarily in terms of sexual imagery, called to "re veal in the world, faithfully, however darkly, the mystery of her Lord until, in the consummation, it shall be manifested in full light."11

In The New Agenda Greeley includes a chapter on the Church entitled "From Ecclesiastical Structure to Community of the Faithful." This "headline" captures Greeley's vision for the Church in a brief, poignant, and pregnant form. The hoped-for movement from the Church as a rigid, authoritarian, and hierarchical bureaucratic institution shaped in the image of a judgmental Father and Tyrant toward the Church as a democratic Gemeinschaft of human beings engaged in a common dialogue with God, a Church shaped in the image of a loving Mother and Spouse, an implacably resourceful and supportive family, is a common and major theme in all of Greeley's novels. Hardly a newcomer, her spirit pervades the parables of Jesus whose radical message of genuine love may finally elicit a truly responsive chord in the democratic, pluralistic, and humanistic ideologies of the twentieth century. It is a Church which has remained alive, despite all official attempts to compromise and destroy it, in celebrations of Christmas and Easter, in stained glass windows and popular tales of Mother Mary and a host of caring saints. This Church lives in the anonymous multitude of sensitive, rational, committed, humane parish priests who have, for nearly two millennia, against all the odds, largely eclipses by their vociferous dogmatic brothers, foolishly persisted in their quiet labor of love. This ideal potential Church exists as backdrop and horizon against which the short- comings of both the Garrison Church of the early twentieth century and the post-Vatican Two Church of the present appear in sharply etched relief. It is the telos, the actuality drawing the potentiality toward its fulfillment.

It is this kind of Church which is envisioned as emerging in the conversation of pagan Brigid with Jesus and Mary. Brigid finds herself in an unredeemed world, a world of barren cliffs rearing from a melancholy, churning sea toward an angry sky, a world of emptiness and howling winds, a world without hope in which the ultimate defiant challenge of human dignity face to face with cosmic futility consists in suicide. "Their" laughter transforms the tragedy into comedy. "They" have arrived bringing joy and hope. Brigid's proudly desperate "I don't believe in hope," the fatal leap from the rearing cliffs into the yawning void, yields to the Christian "leap of faith" into the embrace of God represented on earth by the supportive community of the faithful. "I don't believe in the two of you," Brigid/humanity screams defiantly. "Do you think, child, that matters to us?" is the gentle reply. At the core of Christianity there lies a spirit of loving acceptance. The ancient gods have served their purpose; their season has passed; they are preserved and fulfilled, not annihilated. "The Expected One will come," refers on the literal level to Cormac. On the metaphorical level it characterizes the fundamental attitude of the Church preparing for the eschaton.

It is this kind of Church manifested in Kevin in his crucial conversation with Ellen (frequently noted by readers but totally disregarded by critics). The real Church emerges as a medley of warm images of communal life and shared humanity, as "Father Conroy and Sister Caroline and First Communion and May crownings and High Club dances and midnight mass and all those wonderful things that I love so much." The real Church (like Jesus and Mary) wraps us all up in her blue cloak of hope and love. "And the damn-fool Church says," in Kevin's words, "'Ellen Foley Curran Strauss, we really didn't notice you were gone, because we never let you go.'"12

A church created primarily in the image of a stern and patriarchal God, a Despot rather than a Friend, a Judge rather than a Lover, a traditional Father rather than a Mother, is bound to view itself as unyielding guardian and enforcer of the Law. Feminine (subtly or not so subtly inferior and evil) nature is subjugated to masculine (definitely superior) spirit. In Skinnerian terms, emphasis is on prohibition and punishment, aversive control, rather than positive reinforcement. Applying Maslow's theory, one might say that individual autonomy and self-actualization are discouraged in favor of safe and humble conformity to the status quo. Power is the name of the game. The hierarchical structure has become and end in itself, an idol, Paul Tillich might note. The clergy is caught up in an untenable position. On the one hand, priests are considered elevated members of society, men apart, whose (inevitable) human weaknesses must be carefully concealed from the laity, lest the "ordinary faithful" lose respect for the church. On the other hand, priests and/or religious are themselves no more than anonymous cogs in a vast bureaucracy.

Consequently, individual excellence is suspect, Greeley argues in the three novels of the Passover Trilogy in which his major competent priest characters invariably find themselves harassed and persecuted by fellow clergy and superiors for no reason other than their insistence on going beyond the call of duty, for daring to distinguish themselves as exceptionally dedicated and professionally responsible, rational individuals. Monsignor John Farrell in Lord of the Dance, slightly phony, vain, venal, self-righteous, but on balance a good priest, has committed the unpardonable sin of being a huge success hosting a Sunday night television show, which "earned for its host the criticism and the envy of many of his fellow priests and the animosity of the cardinal archbishop."13 In lines which ring of personal experience and pain Greeley describes John's reaction to Dads Fogarty's (a "brother" priest) attempts at humor in the diocesan newsletter:

Greeley uses the term "clerical culture" to indicate a particular kind of passively aggressive, authoritarian, rigid, resentful, and essentially inauthentic mode of relating to others characteristic of a certain segment of the "Catholic Establishment" (priests and religious) dedicated to the cult of humble mediocrity. The most noxious symptom of contamination with this collective neurosis consists in vicious, corrosive envy, most generally turned against those who are perceived as having strayed from the reservation. "Unable to fight their psychopathic leader," ruminates John Farrell, "the clergy of Chicago stayed alive by eating their own."15

This kind of church rewards docile, non-controversial mediocrity appropriate to a smoothly running mechanism with inter changeable elements. In addition to individual excellence, mystical experiences and private revelations are considered threats, since they bypass the ordinary chain of command. Even the traditional concept of the ecclesia semper reformanda is confined to the straight jacket of officially sanctioned pronouncements. Precisely because of this rigidity, this kind of church, supported by an exoskeleton rather than a spine, is extremely vulnerable to attacks of manic irrationality once any of the rules are relaxed (as some of the recent developments in Holland might indicate).

It is this demonic potential within the church which Greeley assaults with such vigor and determination in his fiction (and non-fiction). "Without Andrew Greeley, the American Church would be even more dishonest, boring, and irrelevant than it is," wrote one of the respondents in my "Clergy on Greeley" survey. He continued, "He loves his ecclesial family so deeply that he is willing to serve her with courageous independence and fierce love." Greeley's role might be considered analogous to that of a surgeon struggling to cut out a spreading cancer about to cripple a beloved patient to who he is irrevocably tied, though he him self, I am sure would far prefer to be remembered as a bard poking fun, a Peter Pan, a leprechaun.

While constructive criticism of the institutional Church constitutes a major thematic strand in The Cardinal Sins, Thy Brother's Wife, and Ascent into Hell, it takes on even greater significance in Virgin and Martyr which deals not as much with weaknesses in the Church as manifested by individuals, as it constitutes an analogical assessment of basic institutional policies of the contemporary global Church. Greeley's position throughout is one of loyal dissent. Blackie Ryan, at that time still in the seminary, makes the point in the course of discus sing the 1960's clerical tendency to marry without proper dispensation. "To refuse even to attempt to obtain a dispensation seems to me deliberately and self-consciously contemptuous of the church. I am no defender of the abuses of power of those in church authority. I reserve the right to criticize as Paul criticized Peter, 'to his face.' But I can't be contemptuous of the church. It may not be much of a church now, but it's the only one I have."16 John Blackwood Ryan, eventually Ph.D., monsignor and rector of the Cathedral of the Holy Name, a specialist on Whitehead and James, and a seminary instructor in Greek and philosophy, is the latest and most appealing in a series of rational, sensitive, humane, paradigmatic priest-characters presented in Greeley's novels. In addition to being a genuinely caring human being, Blackie is a competent professional. He is a capable administrator, a shrewd and empathetic counselor, and a trained philosopher who continues to publish despite his far ranging responsibilities. We first encounter him in The Magic Cup as both Abbot Colum, the holy man of Celtic pride and temper, and Bishop Enda, the wise and gentle mediator, passionately committed to the new faith (and his wife, Lady Ann) while remaining tolerant of the pagan gods and customs still characteristic of this transitional era. He also appears in two incarnations in Death in April. He is the anonymous bearded priest whose sermon concerning the sexual symbolism implicit in the blessing of the Easter waters by plunging the lighted candle into their depths, sounds the perennial theme of God's passionate love affair with His people (while introducing the central image explored in Lord of the Dance). He is also "Uncle Mike" described (like his literary descendant Blackie) as a "wee leprechaun priest . . . short, bouncy, green eyes sparkling with merriment."17 He is what is good in Kevin and Patrick in The Cardinal Sins. He is Jimmy McGuire in Thy Brother's Wife who consistently tries to protect Sean from his destructive tendencies towards arrogant perfectionism and self- laceration. He understands the saving significance of Sean's "sin" despite the latter's horrified protestations to the contrary. He is Xav Martin in Ascent into Hell, a wise and sensible scholar at Hugh's seminary, and Dick McNamara "Ace" in Lord of the Dance.

Enter Blackie, whose veneer of cynical objectivity merely serves to accentuate his passionate dedication to the Church and those he loves with implacable fidelity, taking it upon himself to pursue truth and justice at any cost to himself. "As my friend Father Bill Grogan points out to me," writes Greeley in his memoir, "God is represented in my books by two kinds of characters, the implacable, generously loving Maria and the ingenious determined mystery solver Blackie."18 God on earth, God Incarnate, the Mystical Body of Christ, becomes the Church, and as such the Maria/Blackie syzygy symbolizes not only the androgynous God but also the ideal Church, at once, to use a Hegelian image, combatants, battle, and battle ground, the process of her own genesis. Blackie makes his first major published appearance in Virgin and Martyr (after being introduced in the seasonal story "A Star for Christmas,"19 which in turn evolves into the second chapter of "Happy are the Clean of Heart," the second of a series of Blackie Ryan mysteries based on the Beatitudes. In the Ryan clan Greeley presents an analogue for the Church at her best, utterly loyal to each and every family member, always ready to adopt "strays," engaged in an affectionate communal conspiracy designed to rescue whoever need rescuing at the time. Ned Ryan, naval hero of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, a paradoxical mixture of tenderness and strength, makes a loving patriarch and "pope," particularly in conjunction with passionate, mercurial Kate Collins Ryan, his first wife and mother to John Blackwood (Blackie) and his sister, Mary Kate Murphy, Freudian analyst happily married to a Jungian colleague. In the Ryans, Greeley's preconscious has crystallized the perfect image for his ideal Church, something sought after but never quite achieved in the earlier novels. He writes:

In some ways Virgin and Martyr seems a literary version of How to Save the Catholic Church by Greeley and his sister, the theologian Mary G. Durkin. Many of the same problems are identified and parallel solutions are suggested. Neither the reactionary Counter-Reformation Immigrant church of the first half of the twentieth century nor the post-Vatican Two church of the past two decades is immune to scathing criticism. There is something in Virgin and Martyr to offend virtually everybody. Everybody that is, who resents having pet-causes and pseudo-theological security blankets scrutinized and shredded. The message is clear: the American Catholic Church is in trouble. The Global Church is in trouble. The twentieth century in the form of a post-Vatican Two hurricane (or appropriately Italian scirocco) has invaded her hallowed halls with a vengeance. The forces of change must be harnessed and controlled lest they sweep away the structure. Still, and this essential point must not be forgotten, Virgin and Martyr, in keeping with Greeley's faith in a loving and gracious God, is a work filled with hope. The end of Catholicism and the Church is never a real possibility. The church will survive. In an altered form, and yet, mysteriously, eternally, the same. Many of the birth pangs of transition, however, could be alleviated, the period of readjustment could be shortened, if certain problems are identified and solutions put into effect. A head-in-the-sand ostrich policy will only prolong the agony.

On the institutional level, the major problem faced by the Church consists in a combination of Curial intransigence and Papal isolation which resulted, for example, in the "disastrous" birth control encyclical Humanae Vitae, destined to be largely disregarded by the lower clergy and laity alike, thus leading to a general decline in the power of ecclesiastical authority and an increasing tendency of the laity to affiliate with the church on its own terms. In other words, the Church is plagued by a scar city of competent and genuinely educated leadership (the path toward bishoprics is certainly not paved with scholarly publications, at least in the American Church as an examination of the current Books on Print reveals) drawn from the ranks of a relatively poorly prepared clergy.

Reflecting on this sad state of affairs, Blackie notes, "Most priests and nuns are not very well educated. They are not trained in disciplined intelligence, careful reflection, precise expression and respect for the grey, complex nature of reality. Indeed, such qualities are thought to be unnecessary for virtue if not a serious obstacle to it."21 In all fairness, this statement should probably be amended by adding that this cult of mediocrity is certainly not limited to the preparation of clergy, and that relatively speaking priests and religious might well be somewhat better educated than the average college graduate. Which, unfortunately, means no more than being at best the proverbial one-eyed king in the land of the blind. In the wake of the Second Vatican Council this mixture of enthusiasm and incompetence lead to a "humid jungle of (half-assed) ideas and schemes,"22 Blackie observes with his usual tact.

Manic social and political zeal took the place of careful, passionately dispassionate reflection. Virgin and Martyr constitutes a full-scale assault on banners raised in the name of flash-in-the-pan relevance. Popular versions of liberation theology (adapted from Marx), charismatic renewal (borrowed from Pentecostal Protestantism), self-actualization (stolen from Maslow, albeit misunderstood), Third World rhetoric, encounter groups, women-priests, married priests, gay liberation, hastily deposed saints, . . . The list seems endless.

Not that Greeley implies that the above mentioned causes should not be legitimate concerns of the Church. No one has argued more consistently and forcefully than he for the utter absurdity of excluding women from the priesthood or the need for the church to come to terms with her mystical tradition. Neither does he oppose civil rights, social justice, nuclear responsibility, and self-actualization. He simply argues that it is counterproductive to disconnect the reigns of rationality and professional competence, and put the cart of social and political action before the horses of faith, hope, and love. In a world permeated by rational reflection and transfigured by the all- embracing Love Greeley champions, the kind symbolized by the Madonna/Christ spreading Her mantle, no one would be left out in the cold.

Virgin and Martyr is an indictment not of issues but rather of the inept and amateurish manner in which these issues have been approached. Why is it, for example, Greeley wonders, that so many theologians insist on seeking solutions to very real and urgent problems in alien traditions, neglecting to look for answers in a rich and promising heritage? What makes Marx so much more appealing than Pope Leo XIII? Why does it occasionally appear that there is so little middle ground between the extremes of blindly tenacious, rigid fundamentalism and wholesale rejection of the past? "I think it's too much too soon," Blackie comments concerning the manic frenzy of the sixties. "We can't replace a culture that's at least five hundred years old in a few months. We have to proceed slowly, give it time, resist the temptation for the quick fix, the overnight update, the easy solution."24

Thus, ultimately, Virgin and Martyr is a passionate plea for quality, honesty, sanity. Cathy, the female protagonist, a would-be saint who spends most of her life running away from herself by embracing "big causes," and who spouts traditional "sweet bridegroom Jesus" pieties as convincingly as "male-pig" feminist and "Amerikan Imperialist" revolutionary rhetoric, finally comes face to face with Reality in the form of a young woman, one of those she and her group have supposedly come to save. "Why cannot you North Americans leave us alone ? Why must we be exploited by both your capitalists and your Marxists? Why do you impose on us your religion?"25 It is obvious that she despises the corrupt right-wing military dictatorship running her country (Costaguana, taken from Joseph Conrad). Still, she insists, "Who asked you to be our advocates? . . . Who voted for you?"26 Interesting question.

Blackie's observations concerning the plight of religious orders can be applied to the Church as a whole. "They had a wonderful ideal," he muses, "which toward the end they imposed mostly through power and envy. The when the big changes came in the church and power and envy were turned into different forms, they found that they no longer understood what the ideal was." The orders and the church, however, will survive, "in new forms. In communities that support instead of control, that fight envy instead of institutionalizing it, communities in which power is in the service of love."27 A church, to return to my earlier analogy, shaped in the image of a maternally tender God, a Friend rather than a Despot, a Lover rather than a Judge, a Spouse rather than a Master, a Mother rather than a traditional Father.

Not only Virgin and Martyr but almost all of Greeley's novels have their share of inept priests whose insensitive bumbling traumatizes innocent lay members of the community. Ellen Foley, Anne Reilly, Red Kane, Brendan Ryan, and Suzie Quinlan (of Happy are the Meek) have all been cruelly mistreated and savaged by official representatives of the Church. Anne Reilly, in particular, is almost destroyed by a priest's arrogant in humanity:

This entirely uncaring and inhumane attitude on the part of "Step-Mother" Church is contrasted with Blackie's gentle and healing presence as he tries to explain to an exasperated and furious Anne that her sacrifice of a potentially loving marriage to the idol of nomos was entirely unnecessary.

Greeley clearly recognizes the awesome responsibility born by representatives of the Church for the lives of individuals. As Blackie, the Punk, comments toward the end of Angels of September,

It is up to Mick, the Cop, Annie's Grail, lover, and future husband to put the pieces together and reflect on the Church as "Fair Bride/Loving Mother" and Whore:

Greeley never tires of contrasting the Church in her two destructive contemporary manifestations, as authoritarian, reactionary, rule-ridden fossil and as manic incarnation of sloppy social activism dedicated to change for the sake of change with the Real Church of Christian Love. It is to this Church that Red Kane turns in his hour of need. "Where do I go for help? he asked himself again. The answer was still obvious. The only institution in the world that could help him now was the Roman Catholic Church -- the real Catholic Church. . . . "Holy Name Cathedral," he told the driver."32 One might even argue that by installing Monsignor Ryan as the Rector of the Cathedral, the parish church of the entire city, the bishop's own church, Greeley implicitly affirms his support of the institutional Church. He is not waging war against the hierarchy as such, merely against excessive authoritarianism, mediocrity and incompetence in leadership. More than eight centuries ago, Bernard of Clairvaux suggested that those in ecclesiastical power might be well advised to act more like mothers and less like masters. "Grow gentle, " he wrote, "divest yourselves of ferocity, spare the rod and offer your breasts -- breasts filled with milk not swelled with pride."33

Ultimately, Greeley, like his protagonist Sean Cronin of Thy Brother's Wife, continuously reaffirms his commitment to the Church symbolized by the Medieval hymn Ubi Caritas et Amor, Agape and Eros. She is his Magic Princess and his Holy Grail.