The American Catholic: A Social Portrait by Andrew M. Greeley

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 168 The American Catholic: A Social Portrait. By ANDREW M. GREELEY. New York: Basic Books, 1977. Pp. ~80. $15.00. This volume is the summation of Andrew Greeley's fifteen years of research on the American Catholic population, its subgroups, and the issues which concern it. Three principal themes recur. First, Greeley asserts that there is a " cultural division of labor in American society." That is, Catholics are dramatically under-represented in key social positions (e. g. the national media, foundations, the great private universities) despite their demonstrable educational, economic, and political attainments. Greeley's conclusion is that there remains a not-insignificant residual nativism in these important sectors of the society. · Secondly, Greeley claims that the myth of the "melting pQt" is inadequate for understanding American society, and especially American Catholics , today. The tenacity of ethnic, religious, and familial traditions suggests that the " stewpot " is more accurate as an analogue. And there is a significant paradox here: that while American Catholics have equalled or surpassed the host-cultural majority in attainment, they retain markedly different characteristics in terms of orientation to the family, the neighborhood , and religious symbols. Thirdly, Greeley makes a sharp distinction between Catholic Americans as a subpopulation and the institutional Church. Here the significant phenomenon is of Americans claiming Catholicity as a core personal identity, while simply ignoring as irrelevant the institutional dimensions of the Church, especially in its teaching role. Since I am not competent to address the questions of sociological method which will surround this book, I would prefer to raise what seem to me to be the serious theological questions which emerge from each of Greeley's three themes. In terms of the " cultural division of labor," it seems to me that we have to ask whether the American civil religion (or at least the dominant symbols and myths of American culture) has a demonic tendency to distort and stereotype the Catholic population of this country. I have argued in another journal that this ought not be the case in the instance of the interface between civil religion and American Catholics, since the social-ethical theory of Catholic theology and the American civil religious tradition share a common anthropology and a common incarnational /sacramental vision of reality. At the very least, Greeley's data suggest that a continued dialogue between Catholic theologians and researchers into the dominant American cultural symbols and myths is vital for both groups today. Greeley's data on the tenacity of familial, neighborhood, and religious traditions among American Catholics challenge theologians to ask what an adequate American Catholic theology of " tradition and traditions " 164 BOOK REVIEWS would look like. Are there themes in the genuine Catholic social-ethical tradition (realism, voluntarism, the principles of subsidiarity and the common good, for example) which could provide resources for dealing with the distorting tendencies of both the capitalist and socialist ideologies in American society today? Would, for example, the ascetical tradition in Catholic spirituality, especially as this emerges in family and neighborhood, have anything significant to say to the contemporary " crisis of limits " ? Or, in another vein, do theological systems rooted in the popular themes of alienation and radical secularization really reflect the lived experience of the American Catholic population? These data ought certainly to raise intriguing possibilities for the dialogue with theologies of liberation in the American Catholic community. Finally, Greeley's claims about the rise of "communal Catholics" (i.e. those who, while claiming a Catholic identity, accepting the basic faithvision and symbols of the Catholic Christian tradition, and participating at key life moments in the sacramental system of the Church, simply find the Church-as-institution irrelevant to their lives) raise the most serious questions for American Catholic ecclesiology. Two inter-related issues suggest themselves here: the theology of the " reception " of Church teaching, and Newman's theology of the senaus fidelium. Has American Catholicism suffered from an overly juridical understanding of the magisterium ? What is the relationship between the " Church teaching " and the " Church taught," empirically and theologically? What is the nature, empirically and theologically, of decision-making in the Church? Fundamentally , what is the theology of revelation and faith which undergirds the many operant ecclesiologies...