Quote

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.

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
Church
Attempt
Pagans
Freedom
Strikes
Evangelization
Another
Catholic
Deprive
Good
Pressure
Catholics
People
Choice
Pagan
Came
Roman
Choices
Empire
High
Empires

More quotes by Andrew Greeley

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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.
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 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 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.
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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When I can go just where I want to go, There is a copse of birch trees that I know And, as in Eden Adam walked with God, When in that quiet aisle my feet have trod I have found peace among the silver trees, Known comfort in the cool kiss of the breeze Heard music in its whisper, and have known Most certainly that I was not alone!
Andrew Greeley
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I think the only kind of acceptable evangelization is the evangelization of good example.
Andrew Greeley
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The Catholic men are more upset about women not being able to be priests than are Catholic women.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
Andrew Greeley
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We're given second chances every day of our life. We don't usually take them, but they're there for the taking.
Andrew Greeley
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Nobody puts constraints on God. She doesn't like it.
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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My songs will pass and be forgotten. What counts, however, is that I sang them.
Andrew Greeley
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We are born with two incurable diseases, life, from which we die, and hope, which says maybe death isn't the end.
Andrew Greeley