THE HESITANT PILGRIM: American Catholicism After the Council

by Andrew M. Greeley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 9, 1966

Father Greeley has already given more than ample demonstration of a trenchant wit which has made him the delight of ""liberal"" Catholics and the despair and bete-noire of the less progressive. In this latest work, he executes a much-needed hatchet job on, of all people, those liberals who, it seems, are liberal only with respect to opinions in agreement with their own. They also exhibit the most distressing authoritarianism when confronted with a contrary liberal, or, heaven forfend, ""traditionalist"" position. It is a credit to Greeley that, as ten thousand fall to the right of him, the reader seldom glimpses the hatchet; he wreaks havoc among the philistines by the implications of what he says as he comments in these chapters on the meaning of contemporary American Catholicism, the problem of freedom versus authority in the Church, Catholic education and the intellectual life, the ""new breed,"" and, finally -- and these are the best in a superior group of essays -- on the spiritual implications of what is going on in the American Church. The reader finishes the book with the growing suspicion that he may have just been scalped -- and, worse still, that he enjoyed the experience. No one who cares about the American Church can afford to miss it -- either the book or the experience.

Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1966

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Sheed & Ward

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1966

Categories: NONFICTION