A short life of the author
Andrew Moran Greeley (5 February 1928 – 29 May 2013) was an American Roman Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist, and phenomenally prolific novelist who published over sixty novels, many of them New York Times bestsellers, while simultaneously maintaining a distinguished academic career as a sociologist of religion. He was the most improbable bestselling novelist in America — a celibate priest who wrote sexually explicit fiction about the lives of wealthy Chicago Catholics — and one of the most colourful public intellectuals of the late twentieth century.
Life
Greeley was born in Oak Park, Illinois, and grew up in a devoutly Catholic family on Chicago’s South Side. He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1954, earned a PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1962, and spent his career balancing three vocations: parish priest, academic researcher, and popular writer.
He taught at the University of Chicago and later at the University of Arizona, published dozens of scholarly studies of American Catholic life, wrote a syndicated newspaper column, and produced a bestselling novel nearly every year for three decades. He was a pugnacious, outspoken man who feuded publicly with the American Catholic hierarchy, with fellow sociologists, and with literary critics who dismissed his fiction.
The Cardinal Sins (1981)
Greeley’s breakthrough novel follows two boys from Chicago’s Irish Catholic South Side through seminary, ordination, and parallel careers — one becoming a cardinal, the other leaving the priesthood. The novel’s frank treatment of clerical sexuality (including affairs, both hetero- and homosexual) shocked Catholic readers and thrilled secular ones. It was a massive bestseller, spending months on the New York Times list and selling over three million copies.
The novel established Greeley’s template: Chicago setting, Irish Catholic characters, institutional politics of the Church, sexual candour, melodramatic plotting, and an underlying theological argument that God’s love is reflected in human erotic love — an argument that Greeley the sociologist and theologian made explicitly in his academic work.
The Novels
Greeley wrote prolifically across multiple series. The “Passover” trilogy (Thy Brother’s Wife, Ascent into Hell, Lord of the Dance) explored Chicago Catholic families across generations. The “Saints and Sinners” series (Happy Are the Meek, Happy Are the Clean of Heart, and others) combined mystery plotting with theological reflection. The “Nuala Anne McGrail” series featured an Irish-American woman with psychic abilities solving mysteries in Chicago.
His plotting was formulaic, his prose was workmanlike, and his characterisation relied heavily on types. But his knowledge of the institutional Catholic Church — its politics, its hypocrisies, its genuine spiritual power — gave his fiction a sociological texture that more polished novelists lacked.
Sociology of Religion
Greeley’s academic work was at least as important as his fiction. His empirical studies of American Catholic life — conducted through surveys and statistical analysis — produced findings that challenged both conservative Catholics (who claimed the Church was losing members because of insufficient orthodoxy) and secular liberals (who assumed that educated Catholics would inevitably leave the Church).
The Catholic Imagination (2000) argued that Catholicism produces a distinctive aesthetic sensibility — sacramental, communal, analogical — that shapes Catholic artists’ and writers’ work in ways that are measurable and significant.
Critical Standing
Greeley’s fiction was never taken seriously by literary critics, and he did not expect it to be. His novels were popular entertainment with a sociological thesis embedded in them. His academic work, however, is increasingly recognised as a major contribution to the sociology of religion — rigorous, data-driven, and consistently surprising.
His unique contribution was to demonstrate that a Catholic priest could be simultaneously orthodox in his theology and candid about the Church’s institutional failures — and that the two positions were not contradictory but complementary.
Collecting Greeley
The Cardinal Sins (1981, Warner Books) in first edition brings $15–$40 — widely printed. His academic works are modestly priced. The sheer volume of his output means that individual titles are inexpensive. Signed copies are available, as Greeley was a generous signer.