The situation in which a priest who writes lives has changed drastically since I wrote my first article for America in the 1950’s (“A Road Show for Cana”). My pastor at the time reprimanded me for writing, because his monsignorial friends had criticized him for permitting it. Theoretically a diocesan priest did not need permission to write, as I understand the Jesuits did at that time. But he had better get it just the same. My mentor, Msgr. Jack Egan, with all the skill of a Chicago precinct captain, persuaded his friend Ed Burke, the chancellor, to get the permission from Cardinal Samuel Stritch and then wrote the introduction to my first book, The Church in the Suburbs (or more likely persuaded someone else to write it), which appeared over Monsignor Burke’s name. My current cardinal admits he enjoys the Blackie Ryan character, as well he should.

Those were the days when Sister Mariella Gable was forced to stop writing and to withdraw her stories from circulation, and when the rector of our seminary denounced Graham Greene, sight unread, at the meeting of the local literary society (named after St. Robert Bellarmine).

There has been progress, though it took the revolutionary event of the Second Vatican Council to create the progress. I am still aware that a new cardinal or a Roman bureaucrat could try to stop me with a monitum, as one did in the days of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. A man as politically savvy as Jack Egan, Joe Bernardin won to the cause the late Cardinal John O’Connor of New York, an unusual ally to be sure, but one to whose memory I am grateful. As I told Joe, I won’t leave—even if they try to throw me out; I like being a parish priest too much ever to leave.

The answer to the question in the title of this article is that I am a parish priest who writes. I became a priest because the work of the priests in our parish fascinated me when I was a child. It still does. Many priests tell me, triumphantly it often seems, that I am not a parish priest because I do not do “full-time” parish work as they do—as though “full-time” parish work is the epitome of priesthood. If it makes them happy to deny me my identity, far be it from me to contest that joy. Nonetheless, I claim even to be a “full-time” parish priest because all my work—teaching, sociology, commentary, storytelling—is priestly work, indeed parish work. It is an effort to bring the Gospel of God’s love to the ordinary people in the church, whom I view as being like the parishioners in the parishes I have known since 1935. I also say parish Masses and preach, hear confessions, visit the sick, counsel the troubled and bury the dead. I see no conflict among these various forms of ministry, only a common task—the task of enchantment and illumination.

Take storytelling. As John Shea has said, one tells a story not to educate or indoctrinate but to illuminate, to enchant the reader or the listener into the world of the story in the hope that when they emerge from the world of the story, they do so with an enhanced view of the possibilities of their lives. (That is also the function of homilies.)

When readers encounter the fictional Archbishop Blackie or Nuala Anne, for example, they run the risk, take the chance, have the opportunity of brushing up against the winds of the Spirit. With Nuala and her husband, Dermot, they experience the love God feels for us in their love for the barely alive neonate, who three years later emerges as the “tiny terrorist”; and in the renewal of the marital love for one another in sexual union; and in Blackie’s impatience with those who would blight first love—“God’s tricky plot to keep the species going.” In these characters and the stories about them, readers encounter a vision that shows second chances and happy endings are always possible.

It is argued that most readers do not see such lurking sacraments in my stories. My experience is that large numbers of them do, but numbers don’t matter; if even one or two readers are sufficiently enchanted to see new possibilities in their own lives, then the storyteller has succeeded.

Moreover, every storyteller wants to say something about the meaning of human life and human death for the same reasons of enchantment and illumination. Every storyteller is, in one fashion or another, a homilist.

Well, says the inimicus homo, you’re no Flannery O’Connor or Graham Greene or François Mauriac or Sigrid Undset or J. F. Powers. Indeed that is true; moreover, I am no Marcel Proust or Ernest Hemmingway or William Faulkner or Scott Fitzgerald or James Joyce either. It is not clear to me why I should be.

Joe Bernardin once asked me if the Sean Cronin character was based on him. “You should be so lucky,” I replied.

The newest Blackie book (many see in him a similarity to Msgr. Jim Mahoney of the Paterson diocese, a similarity that both Jim and I vigorously deny) was called in its early draft Death Comes for an Archbishop. One of my nieces, aware that in the previous book Bishop Ryan had been made a coadjutor with the right of succession, said the title made her shiver. I wasn’t going to kill Blackie, was I?

No way. Conan Doyle may have hated Sherlock Holmes, but I find Blackie—a symbol of the priesthood at its best—pure delight. Blackie will live as long as I do, and the two of us, please God, will continue his adventures in the world to come.

What about my sociology, a work I undertook in service of the church? There are perhaps five major themes to emerge from it, all of which have appeared in this journal:

• Catholic schools are an enormous asset to the church, especially in a time of traumatic change.

• For the most part, priests who are happy in their work and would marry if they could are likely to stay in the priesthood.

• The birth control encyclical, Humanae Vitae, did not work. As a result Catholics now tend to be Catholics on their own terms. I am told that they cannot do that. My point is that they do, because the leadership has lost its credibility. (Sorry about that.)

• Despite all that has happened (most recently the sexual abuse scandals) in the last four decades, it is proving difficult to drive Catholics out of the church.

• The sacramental imagination, as badly enacted as it is, still holds most Catholics in the church.

It is fair to say that these themes have been greeted with ridicule and then silence.

So it goes.

The Unstoppable Pen of Andrew M. Greeley

A priest for almost 53 years, the Rev. Andrew M. Greeley is one of the most prolific Catholic authors of our time. The editorial board of America recently bestowed on him its Campion Award in recognition of his contributions to Christian letters over more than half a century. The award is named for St. Edmund Campion, the English Jesuit martyr (d. 1581), who was also a proflific writer. Father Greeley’s published works number close to 170 and include sociological analysis, apologetics, memoir, books on the Catholic imagination, the church in the world, priesthood, education, vocation and parish life—in addition to works of fiction, which include a series of mystery novels featuring Archbishop Blackie Ryan and another starring an Irish psychic, Nuala Anne McGrail.

Possessed of a keen intellect, quick Irish wit, penetrating insight into popular culture and an unfailing love for the church he serves, Father Greeley is numbered among America’s best friends.

A sampling of his popular nonfiction

The Truth About Conservative Christians: What They Think and What They Believe—written with Michael Hout (Univ. of Chicago Press)

Call to Serve

The article Religious Life at the Brink, by Donald Senior, C.P., (10/16) was certainly thought-provoking; but what of today’s brothers? I would like to see an article dealing with them and their call to serve Christ, not only with their hands but intellectually and academically as well, according to the spirituality of their order.

Justin De Chance, S.J.

Every year, as dioceses struggle to meet to the need for priests to pastor the growing Catholic population in the United States, the bishops import more priests from other countries. While the practice varies by diocese, in the aggregate it grows apace. It seems so far to be a helpful stopgap measure. The most significant cultural issues that have arisen—some priests with seriously deficient communication skills and authoritarian, sometimes patriarchal styles of pastoral ministry, for example—are being addressed. (One of the most awkward situations is that of a priest who comes from an English-speaking country but cannot be understood because of an accent that was perfectly intelligible to his own people back home.) High-quality programs promoting accent reduction and cross-cultural sensitivity are now available in some regions, and more dioceses are requiring non-native priests to be accredited by such a program before they may assume a permanent assignment as a pastoral minister.

But perhaps the focus on the practical effectiveness of international priests is misplaced. Perhaps it begs the more fundamental question: Will the practice of importing clergy into the United States serve the long-term good of the church universal?

A Comparison: Nurse Shortages

A front-page story in The New York Times on May 24 reported a crisis in U.S. health care brought on by a serious shortage of nurses. To fill the shortage, nursing schools and hospitals recruited students and professionals from poorer countries, such as the Philippines. While the practice appears to be beneficial for the United States, the article highlighted the adverse effect it is having on the countries from which the nurses come. “Health care has deteriorated [in the Philippines] in recent years as tens of thousands of nurses have moved abroad,” the article claims. Since the most precious resource of any nation is its skilled human capital, that resource is diminished whenever skilled workers leave. The president of the Philippine Nurse Association has observed: “The Filipino people will suffer because the U.S. will get all our trained nurses.”

As the United States imports foreign priests, what attention is being paid to the “brain drain” or “skills drain” in the sending countries? How can we justify this when the explosion of converts in some of those countries requires ever more sophistication in leadership, planning and management of the church’s future there?

According to the Times story, it is difficult for nurses from developing countries to “resist the magnetic pull of the United States.” Coming to the United States allows them to improve both their own and their families’ economic status. Nurses overseas “send home billions of dollars each year to their families.”

Experience indicates a similar magnetic pull among the international clergy. The bishops who send their priests to the United States hope that their time abroad will help the priests to become better trained and that the skills they acquire will enable them to improve the church when they return. It is a laudable vision: transfer skills from the wealthy to others who need them. But once the priests have tasted the affluence of the United States, many are reluctant to return to their country of origin. It would take an angelic view of ministerial calling to deny that economics plays a role in some priests’ eagerness to go on “reverse mission” to the United States in the first place. Remember that old saw, “The missionaries came to do good, and did well.”

The magnetism of affluence can have a negative effect on the priests’ work in the United States as well. One hears of priests from foreign cultures who seem to attend as many rituals in the communities of their expatriates as they can, assured of generous cash offerings to send home. The practice is understandable. The priests are far from home, and their families may be in serious economic need. But if this results in neglect of the community to which the priest is supposed to be ministering by his official assignment, his priorities would need realignment.

Emergent Questions

Even such a sketchy comparison between these two scarcities suggests further questions. Looking beneath the rhetoric of reverse mission, we might ask, Is this recruitment practice the ecclesiastical version of a secular scenario, in which the resources of the poor are exhausted to serve the short-term needs of the rich?

An analogous trend can be seen in the way American priests in general are currently being assigned, on the basis of quantity. The parishes with the most parishioners get the priests. As a result, the suburban parishes “get richer” in leadership at the expense of the inner-city and rural parishes. How does such a practice embody “the new evangelization” or a church in mission?

Is our practice of recruiting priests from other countries simply another example of the American penchant for the quick fix? And beyond its consequences for the developing churches, what are its consequences for the U.S. church? Does focusing on our immediate shortage prevent us from considering other available alternatives that might be more pastorally effective (for ourselves and others) in our changing world? If we are going to apply a Band-Aid, we should use one that is effective, but first we need to be sure that such a treatment is suited to the good of the body as a whole. Band-Aids are for minor cuts, not cancer.

A New Study of International Priests

A study by Dean R. Hoge and Aniedi Okure, International Priests in America: Challenges and Opportunities (Liturgical Press, 2006), asks whether U.S. dioceses should keep importing international priests—the authors tend to think they should—and how this could best be accomplished. The book is significant for the wealth of comparative data it offers on the general U.S. Catholic population, the number of U.S.-born seminarians and priests, and the number of international seminarians and priests as well as the countries from which they come. It describes the variations in the ways international priests are trained and ordained, whether and to what extent their home dioceses are compensated for seminary education, and how the international priests are accepted in U.S. parishes after they have been assigned. This information ought to be part of the ongoing discussion about the future staffing of parishes, whether in the United States or elsewhere.