Q: Father Greeley, what is the essence of being an American Catholic? What makes a Catholic distinctive?
A: I think it's the stories. 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. They like the stories -- Christmas, Easter, May crowning, the souls in purgatory, the saints, the angels, the mother of Jesus. These are enormously powerful religious images. Some people might think they've become clichˇs through the century, and maybe for some they have. But for most Catholic lay folks, the images and the stories are what hold us in the Church despite, sometimes, our leadership.
Q: If you were trying to define the essence of American Catholicism, what would you say?
A: Well, I'd say that Catholicism in the United States has the distinct advantage of being in a pluralistic society, where your religion contributes something to your identity. So you tend to define yourself as a Catholic. I'm Irish, Catholic, a Democrat from the West Side of Chicago, and that's pretty much my identity. But for most Americans, that relation is part of their identity, so you come to them and say, "Where are you from?" or "What are you?" when [they] move into a neighborhood, and they'll say Protestant or Catholic or Jew. It's the preprogrammed response. I don't know how I would explain it to people who live in a country where everybody's one religion, but I would try to say that religion is a part of who we are and what we are. It gives us something to belong to and something to believe in in our lives.
Q: What is the religious core of Catholicism? What is the kernel and what is the husk?
A: 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. God lurks everywhere. That's the fundamental Catholic instinct on the imaginative and poetic level -- that God is lurking everywhere. Right down the street, right around the corner, there's God.
Q: You've used the term "communal Catholic." What do you mean by that?
A: Well, I meant people who have decided they're going to be Catholics on their own terms. They are Catholic, they're strongly Catholic, they like being Catholic; but they're not going to let Church leadership dictate the terms of belonging. Immediately after the Second Vatican Council, [there was] the euphoria and the effervescence of the council, the contagion [from] the council fathers to the people and to the lower clergy, and in a remarkably short period of time, they changed the Church. By 1975, all this had happened: birth control wasn't wrong, premarital sex wasn't wrong, priests leaving the priesthood wasn't wrong, nuns leaving the religious life wasn't wrong. You didn't really have to go to mass every Sunday. You didn't have to go to confession before receiving communion every time. All of these things, which they never really understood and they didn't like, were just swept away. Now, a whole generation later, despite all the efforts of the present pope, they [the Church fathers] have not been able to restore the acceptance of those teachings. And I don't see how they ever will. It may be good, [it] may be bad, but the sociologists say this is what's happened.
Q: Where does the idea of "communal" come in, though?
A: Well, they're part of the Catholic community, but they're not necessarily obedient to the teaching Church. If 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.
Q: Let me ask you about another phrase you've used -- the "Catholic imagination." What is the Catholic imagination?
A: The Catholic imagination is metaphorical or sacramental. It sees God as present in the world. The Protestant imagination, the dialectical imagination, wants to preserve God from the possibility of idolatry by identifying with His creatures. Catholicism has no problem with that. It sees God present in His creatures, in all of the creatures, and especially in those creatures that love us and that we love.
Q: What do you think are the most serious problems facing the American Catholic Church?
A: Women. And the woman problem is also a man problem, because men have stronger feelings about the rights of women in the Church than women do. Not much stronger, but some. The Church just has not been able to cope with the demands for fairness and equality from women, so they're very angry. For a long time, the bishops could console themselves -- and I think some still do -- that these are just radical feminists. But the radical feminists include their sisters and their nieces and their mothers and all the women in their lives. They just don't like the way the Church treats them. And this includes lots of parish priests. They are just awfully sloppy in their respect and sensitivity toward women.
Q: What else?
A: The next thing is the quality of preaching and worship. Thirty years ago, before the Vatican Council, Catholics didn't know what liturgy was. Now they know what it is, and they want it [to be] good. They want good preaching and good liturgy. The parishes that provide those things flourish. But so many priests, for one reason or another, don't do it.
Q: Christians, of course, make up the vast majority of people in this country; but there's a growing religious diversity. Although Americans are tolerant of other religions, should Christians be evangelizing, trying to convert others to Christianity?
A: I think the only kind of acceptable evangelization is the evangelization of good example. The kinds of lives we live, the joy, the patience, the charitableness of our lives is the way we influence other people. The early apostles said, "See how these Christians love one another." My colleague Rodney Stark at the University of Washington has done research on the spread of Christianity. He has empirically validated that finding. 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.
Q: Let's take it a little bit further. Do you think Americans believe that there is truth in all religions? And, if so, does this violate the idea that the only way to salvation is through Christ?
A: Well, I think Catholic Americans had better believe there's truth in all religions, because the Second Vatican Council said that. We don't believe that we have a monopoly on truth. We believe what we have is true, but it's not the whole truth. And we can learn a lot from the other religions if we listen to them respectfully. We don't give up our heritage; we expand it. There's the great story about Saint Augustine of Canterbury. He [went] to England when the Anglo-Saxons had taken over, and he liked them; they seemed to be good people. He wondered whether it was all right to adapt their customs to Christianity. And Gregory the Great, who was pope then [in] 600, wrote him a letter saying, "Well, of course. As long as these are good and true and beautiful, and there's nothing unnatural about them, then of course they can be adapted for Christianity." That's been our policy ever since. Sometimes we've violated it, but that's the official policy. We can learn from everybody. Catholicism means, "Here comes everyone."
Q: But how can a Christian, a Catholic reconcile that with Christ's saying, "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me"?
