RIP to Fr. Andrew Greeley, a bastion of progressive Roman Catholicism in the USA. His novel Ascent Into Hell, recommended by Brennan Manning, was an important early step in my departure from Fundamentalism just over a decade ago.
Fr. Greeley’s voice was a passionate one for justice and inclusion in Catholicism. He died this week at age 85.
Reblogged from the NY Times:
In a time when the word “maverick” is often used indiscriminately, Father Greeley — priest, scholar, preacher, social critic, storyteller and scold — was the real thing. One could identify a left and a right in American Catholicism, and then there was Father Greeley, occupying a zone all his own.
Exuberantly combative, he could be scathing about the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops; at one point he described them as “morally, intellectually and religiously bankrupt.” If the church wanted “to salvage American Catholicism,” he wrote, it would be well advised to retire “a considerable number of mitered birdbrains.”
But he could be equally critical of secular intellectuals, whom he accused of being prejudiced against religion, and reform-minded Catholics, who he said had a weakness for political or cultural fads.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 
Fr. Greeley was a big influence on me. I have read most of his fiction. At a formative time in my life, the vision of God, and of theology he offered was a needed counterpoint to the dry, rules-based fundamentalism I was over-exposed to in my youth.