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One cannot escape the harsh fact that as a ministerial profession, the priesthood has very serious problems. They are not new. They did not develop yesterday or last year.

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
Cannot
Develop
Problem
Problems
Years
Serious
Ministerial
Year
Priesthood
Lasts
Harsh
Last
Escape
Fact
Profession
Facts
Yesterday

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Yet, if the most frequent sex and apparently the best sex is that between married partners who are faithful to one another, is there not a hint that affection might be an important aspect of sex? Even love?
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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.
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There is an electricity about a friendship relationship. We are both more relaxed and more sensitive, more creative and more reflective, more energetic and more casual, more excited and more serene. It is as though when we come in contact with our friend we enter into a different environment.
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Is the patience of the American people that long suffering? Is there no outrage left in the country?
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Practically speaking, your religion is the story you tell about your life.
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I think the only kind of acceptable evangelization is the evangelization of good example.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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It is possible to begin again. It is hard, and we never do it perfectly, but it can be done.
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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.
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An adolescent is somebody who is in between things. A teenager is somebody who's kind of permanently there. And so living with them through the various teenage hopes and sorrows and joys was curiously enough a maturing experience for me.
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In God, the characteristics of men and women that we admire in men and women are combined. That's been a traditional Catholic teaching that God is the combination of opposites.
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The Catholic men are more upset about women not being able to be priests than are Catholic women.
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I think that the core doctrines of Christianity - the incarnation, the resurrection, life after death-these are as strong as ever. In fact, the belief in life after death has increased in this century.
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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.
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I have to say that I have no regrets about my decision to become a priest or about the major directions my ministry has taken me... I have been and am happy as a priest, and I have never been lonely... I could have used a bit more solitude.
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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.
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I think the real problem for American religion are those minority of fundamentalists who try to identify political policies with religion.
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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.
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