In the Twilight of a Noted Theologian’s Life, the Words Still Go Forth / Chicago News Cooperative

From his apartment high in the John Hancock Center on Wednesday, the Rev. Andrew Greeley could have looked down at both the cardinal’s office and the university building hosting the unveiling of his latest book.

But that’s about all he could do on a lovely fall day in which the passions of his past confronted the frustrating infirmities of his present. It’s unclear what he’s thinking, as it is a bit unclear what history will think of him.

“Chicago Catholics and the Struggles Within Their Church” is a provocative analysis of Chicago Catholics, based on interviews with 500 of them in Cook and Lake Counties. It’s the 170th-something and surely last work of fiction or nonfiction from a man whose life is a challenge to condense into a concise, Internet-friendly summary.

Iconoclastic freelance priest. Critic of the church establishment. Man of faith and science. Serious sociologist with a breezy, non-academic style. Wealthy author of sometimes sexually explicit novels. Syndicated columnist. Talk show regular. Polemicist. Mentor to many. Thin-skinned. Shy. Generous.

Ordained in 1954, he spent 10 years on a parish staff but ultimately was allowed to focus on research and publishing. For two decades starting in the mid-1960s, he feuded with John Cody, the Chicago cardinal whom he called a “madcap tyrant,” and even settled a related libel suit brought by a journalist.

“The Cardinal Sins,” one of many novels belittling church leaders and rife with awkward sex scenes, sold more than three million copies, and the fame it generated emboldened him to rankle superiors. He once concluded that Catholic bishops were “morally, intellectually and religiously bankrupt” after they spurned results of his presentation detailing how many priests opposed the church on birth control, divorce and celibacy.

He generated strong reactions. The columnist Mike Royko once derided him as “an intellectual priest who dabbles in journalism” and a “thin-lipped, constipated quivery twerp.” Ouch.

Wednesday’s news conference was at the University of Chicago’s downtown business school. The core of Father Greeley’s research was done at the university, though it never granted him tenure, to his great chagrin.

He may not be a sociologist’s sociologist, a theologian’s theologian, a historian’s historian or a journalist’s journalist. But melding the disciplines make him rare, said Richard Rosengarten, a University of Chicago divinity professor.

His contribution, Mr. Rosengarten said, was “connecting the dots between Rome and Chicago,” using research of rank-and-file Catholics to contrast how the Vatican talked about Catholicism and how it was actually lived in the parishes of Chicago.

“He was able to put his finger on a particular ‘pulse’ of Catholicism that wasn’t so much concerned about what the Pope said it was about as the local parish community; less concerned about official teachings than caring for one’s neighbor,” said Susan Ross, chairwoman of the theology department at Loyola University Chicago.

“Most people studying religion would go to theologians or church hierarchy — he went to the congregation, collecting data from the general public,” said Colm O’Muircheartaigh, dean of the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. “He was a pioneer in the sociology of religion who spawned a lot of academic successors.”

We don’t know if Father Greeley understands any of that.

Nearly two years ago, he gave an afternoon talk in Rosemont. Having to get back to the city during the evening rush, he took a cab to the Rosemont stop on the Blue Line train.

As he exited, his coat got stuck in the taxi’s door. Father Greeley, a vibrant 80 at the time, was dragged along the ground and sustained a substantial brain injury. There has been some improvement in his condition, but no notion of any significant recovery. He scans the newspaper as well as many e-mails.

So who is Father Greeley? Visits by friends remind them of the challenge of defining any life.

For James Houlihan, the Cook County assessor, Father Greeley is the young priest, just out of seminary, assigned to Christ the King Parish in the Beverly neighborhood in 1955, when Mr. Houlihan was in third grade.

“He was the first adult who talked to us like we were adults,” Mr. Houlihan said. “I went to seminary, and later into politics, in large part due to him.”

Now, Mr. Houlihan discerns occasional “sparkles of connection interrupted by moments where he seems lost,” he said. “It’s very difficult not to engage with him. One wonders what is going on in the brain. That’s the hardest thing for me.”

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