Changing Catholics

Although Andrew Greeley has written this book to be read primarily by non-Catholics, its in-depth sociological portrait of today’s Catholic will also surprise and enlighten most Catholics. Much of the material will not be entirely new to followers of Greeley’s prodigious scholarly and journalistic output. He has drawn liberally from his previous works and added fascinating, fresh information to flesh out what might well be called the “compleat Catholic of the 1970s.”

Greeley is concerned here primarily with Catholic people, not with the church as an institution. His thesis is that the lives, status, attitudes, and feelings of the Catholic population 239 have been so completely distorted in the national cons...