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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.

Andrew Greeley

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Andrew Greeley
Age: 85 †
Born: 1928
Born: February 5
Died: 2013
Died: May 29
Catholic Priest
Journalist
Novelist
Priest
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Oak Park
Illinois
Andrew M. Greeley
Andrew Moran Greeley
Like
Catholic
Early
Head
Stop
Stories
Hard
Years
Catholics
Life
Fill

More quotes by Andrew Greeley

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The men who were running the church in the late '60s and '70s panicked when they saw the chaos, which developed after the council. The relatively modest changes of those years thawed the ice in which Catholicism had been frozen since the French Revolution.
Andrew Greeley
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Everyone takes surveys. Whoever makes a statement about human behavior has engaged in a survey of some sort.
Andrew Greeley
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It was generally believed that Catholics were not interested in arts and science graduate schools. They weren't going to be intellectuals. And so I put the theses to the test. And they all collapsed.
Andrew Greeley
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Search for the perfect church if you will when you find it, join it, and realize that on that day it becomes something less than perfect.
Andrew Greeley
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Would it not be much better to have a president who deliberately lied to the people because he thought a war was essential than to have one who was so dumb as to be taken in by intelligence agencies, especially those who told him what he wanted to hear?
Andrew Greeley
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I don't think Jesus was an exclusivist. He said, and we believe, that He is the unique representation of God in the world. But that doesn't mean this is the only way God can work.
Andrew Greeley
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It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us.
Andrew Greeley
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As the criminal, sinful war in Iraq enters its third year, the president goes to Europe to heal the wounds between the United States and its former allies, on his own terms of course.
Andrew Greeley
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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.
Andrew Greeley
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I have terrible handwriting. I now say it's a learning disability... but a nun who was a very troubled woman hit me over the fingers with a ruler because my writing was so bad.
Andrew Greeley
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Angels are wonderful and exciting, and they have the appeal of beings who will take care of us and manifest God's personal concern.
Andrew Greeley
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It is possible to begin again. It is hard, and we never do it perfectly, but it can be done.
Andrew Greeley
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The highest love of all finds its fulfillment not in what it keeps, but in what it gives.
Andrew Greeley
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Note the three most important Cabinet positions. Rice said that it was better to find the weapons of mass destruction than to see a mushroom cloud.
Andrew Greeley
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If there is not laughter in intimacy, it becomes heavy, burdensome, and dull. At my best moments, the love dialogue I try to carry on with You each day is comic-what could be more comic than a human addressing the Ground of Being as an intimate? It's a kind of blasphemy that I dare because you have called for it, and that is pretty humorous, too.
Andrew Greeley
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Priest organizations around the country, both local and national, should realize that their membership has a serious image problem and undertake programs to improve it.
Andrew Greeley
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The seminaries must face the fact that they are not turning out well-trained professional clergy. They must realize that preaching is creative work and that some element of creativity should be required as a condition for ordination.
Andrew Greeley
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I wouldn't say the world is my parish, but my readers are my parish. And especially the readers that write to me. They're my parish. And it's a responsibility that I enjoy.
Andrew Greeley
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Since the end of the World War II, the United States has fought three small wars...we lost all three of them and for the same reason-hubris.
Andrew Greeley
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Is the patience of the American people that long suffering? Is there no outrage left in the country?
Andrew Greeley