Walking by a neighbor’s house late Tuesday afternoon last week, I came across a group of lively older women just emerging. What they had been in Yvonne’s home I guessed: they were the people who meet every week in order to write letters to public of-ficials, newspapers, and other agencies.

They’ve been doing it since 1983, sixteen straight years of public-spirited action. From the beginning they had the good sense to keep a record of their proceedings. Some of their minutes have been donated to the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe.

How have they managed to keep going for so long? “We have a good time,” says Yvonne Pappenheim. Of the other members, she says, “They all feel it’s their thing.”   They are not intimates, yet they feel a strong sense of camaraderie and they trust one another.

By now, they are eight in number, and range from 70 to 93 years of age. In an-swer to my question about what they had done that afternoon, one of their number told me they were writing about campaign finance reform.

Members of the group currently include the following: Evelyn Brew, Margaret Brown, Mildred Allen Reis, Marion Billings, Nancy Delaiti, Yvonne Pappenheim, Helen Grumman and Ruth Weizenbaum. Of these, the first six live in Cambridge, while Ms. Grummen is a resident of Newton and Ms. Weizenbaum comes from Concord.

Two members are legally blind but they stay well-informed through listening to the radio. The group follows the same routine each week. At three on Tuesday afternoon they gather and sit in the hostess’s living room discussing the issues for about an hour. Then, after coffee and cookies, they sit around the dining room table and prepare to write.  

Each person writes whatever she chooses. On occasion they will all sign one common letter. Most of the time, however, they write as individuals. It also happens sometimes that nothing gets written.

Their convener and usually the hostess, Yvonne Pappenheim, explains: “Some-times things get confusing and we don’t write anything.” But this seems not to discourage them; they simply wait till the next time.

I admire them, however far their effectiveness extends. That they do it at all stirs my respect. They resist the temptation to plead age as an excuse for doing nothing.  To them, concern for the common good remains a basic part of their self-definition as they grow older.

“All  have the usual ailments of growing older,” Yvonne  says, “but we never talk about it.”  “We laugh a lot,” she adds, “It  helps to forget your age – we are very lively as a group; it’s a matter of life over death.”

The issues they pursue – federal, state, and local – include a wide range. The test ban treaty, the School of the Americas, minimum wage, housing, the death penalty, come up frequently.  

Ms. Pappenheim expresses the group rationale: “It’s important to take a stand; otherwise nothing will ever change.”

But sometimes the letters do not press for action. Instead, they are intended simp-ly to thank officials for taking action.

These determined women are remarkably patient. About some issues, they say, “We’ve been writing about this for years.” And occasionally, “By the time we get an an-swer, you can’t remember what in the world you wrote about.”  

They recognize that one of the advantages of age, perhaps a wisdom that comes with it, is the realization that societal change inevitably takes time. “You have to keep hacking away,” says the convenor, “It’s the only ways things happen.”

Some victories do come their way. The women took heart recently when they dis-covered that funds for the School of the Americas were cut back.

I asked Ms. Pappenheim if, before writing, she ever gets angry. “The angrier you are, the better you write,” she answered. “Sometimes you have to get upset.”

Clearly, these enterprising women have not bought into the notion that age is simply a time for pulling back from concern for the world. They presumably do not see later life as a kind of natural monastery. The classical Hindu notion of retirement years as a stage when one takes to the forest and lives cut off from the larger world seems not to appeal to them.  

I think it does members of this letter-writing group credit that they do not push only for legislation that favors older people. Instead, they feel concern for all of society, young people as well as old. This was also the genius of Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers, who saw that advocates of a certain age commend their own cause better if they show concern about their juniors too.

They also show me that a link is possible between caring about society and paying attention to the good of one’s own soul. The spiritual ideal of combining action and con-templation may be within range after all.

Richard Griffin

You have to admire a guy who, nearly age 70, decides to run for public office for the first time. Even when you know he has zero chance of getting elected and you do not agree with most of his positions, still his taking the plunge demands respect. That’s what I feel for my friend David Slavitt, Republican nominee for the 26th Middlesex District of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Before tossing his beret into the bull ring, David consulted me about the wisdom of running. Yes, do run, I advised him, but only if you keep two principles firmly in mind.

First, remember that you have absolutely no chance of winning. And second, you owe it to yourself to have fun while running.

Regretfully, I must report that, as to my first counsel, David has proved inconstant. Like almost every other candidate I have ever known, he sometimes allows himself to fantasize about sitting among the elected representatives of the people. He lapses into the impossible dream that he can upset a Democratic incumbent of eleven years’ standing.

Admittedly, that incumbent, Tim Toomey, eked out a surprisingly narrow victory in last month’s primary over a novice challenger who was not nearly so well known in the district. Clearly David Slavitt has allowed this near miss to encourage fantasies of knocking off the Democratic nominee. But he is also clearly having fun.

Out for entertainment, I attended a debate last week between Toomey and Slavitt. Not being a resident of their district, I felt no personal stake in their contest and could be present in a lighthearted spirit. But I did look forward to hearing some of what I have come to call Slavittisms. David did not disappoint.

As a nonbeliever in political correctness, he can always be relied on to favor wit over tact.  

Until recently, this political nouveau venu would have been lambasting Tom Finneran, the erstwhile Speaker of the House. Even now, however, he takes a swipe at the man. Of the former Speaker, Slavitt does not shrink from charging that he “lied to a panel of federal judges.”

By now, however, the position of speaker has devolved to Sal DiMasi whose policies may be similar to Finneran’s. So Slavitt has turned his rhetorical guns on the new speaker, calling him “Finneran’s Rottweiler.”

Like others, I laughed at this characterization, but as a non-dog person I had to look up the term. I learned that these pets are named for a German city. Tall and powerful and mean looking, they often serve as guard dogs. They bite.

Asked what he thinks of the presidential race, David does not hide his own educational pedigree. Speaking of the candidates and himself, he acknowledges: “All three of us are Yalies.” Of Kerry, he says: “I was for him before I was against him.”

Is he in favor of extending the Green Line into Somerville at the risk of furthering gentrification? To this question from Toomey, his challenger replies: “I think gentrification is generally a good thing.”  He also makes fun of the station at Lechmere which has been “temporary for the last 80 years.”

Toomey goes after my friend for calling Somerville a suburb of Cambridge. David holds to this position, one that seems hardly attractive to voters from the part of Somerville that falls within the 26th district. Without Harvard and MIT, he believes, Cambridge would offer little more than its neighboring city.  

One of Slavitt’s favorite issues is the abuse that he perceives happening under the so-called Quinn Bill. That 1970 legislation provides promotions and other benefits for police officers and firefighters who take courses in public colleges and universities. David complains that “the cops are taking worthless courses.” Worse still is the double- dipping that they practice: “The cops become crooks,” he charges.

About Toomey’s opposition to rolling back the state income tax, David asks the incumbent: “Are you going along with your leadership or are you in economic error entirely on your own?”

Even Representative Toomey smiles at thrusts like this one. He knows that his opponent is enjoying himself and so, no doubt is he. But the incumbent does not appear to underestimate the perils of being challenged by the author of some 80 books.

In a fine frenzy of rhetoric, Slavitt concludes the debate by characterizing what he calls the Democrat Party as “corrupt, complacent, self-congratulatory, and overbearing in its stranglehold on public life in the Commonwealth.”

Early in his campaign Slavitt attended a Republican rally at which Mitt Romney, the current governor, addressed his party’s aspirants for state office. David took inspiration from Romney’s reflections on the meaning behind electoral politics. “You are all going to die,” Romney said, much to David’s astonishment.

With this quixotic saying, Romney was suggesting that one should take risks in a lifetime that does not last forever. Sticking your neck out is worth doing, even when you end up tilting at windmills.

Richard Griffin

The year was 1960 and Jack Kennedy was running hard for president. His campaign exhilarated me back in those more illusioned days. We shared much in common−Boston, Harvard, the Church−and my father was a friend of his father. Jack’s charm and urbanity captivated my younger self and made me follow his campaign with high hopes.

It made a difference for me that Kennedy was a Catholic. I identified with his religious tradition, one that I shared and took to be the source of my most cherished values. When he was challenged by those who opposed him for his faith, I rooted for him and cheered when he skillfully defended himself against accusations that he would be a tool of the pope.

Probably I should have regarded the election of 1960 as more crucial than I actually did. Had I foreseen how the Cold War would heat up with the Cuban Missile Crisis, I would have felt the stakes to be higher. Fortunately, in what proved his finest hour, Kennedy made wise decisions when they were most needed.

More than four decades have passed and now another Catholic, John Kerry, is running as the Democratic nominee. My affective identification with the second JFK is not nearly so close as it was with the first, but I want more desperately for this senator to be elected president.

I do so, not so much because of Kerry’s personal qualities, but because the White House incumbent has proven such a menace both to our nation and, in fact, to the world at large. Never before have I felt such fear that a major party presidential candidate might seriously damage civil liberties at home and the prospects for peace among nations.

To me, joking about George W. Bush’s alleged dimness clouds the reality. In fact, this man has been smart enough to bring about changes on an unprecedented scale. He has initiated preemptive warfare that has replaced the doctrine of containment and deterrence that had prevailed at least since the start of the Cold War.

On the domestic front, this Bush has proven adept at getting his agenda adopted  by making the Congress dismayingly compliant. In doing so, he has plunged the country deeply into debt, placing a huge burden on coming generations. His tax cuts have benefited a few, and created a problematic future for the many.

Using blunderbuss tactics, he and his allies in Congress got members to pass Medicare legislation under the rubric of providing prescription drug coverage. This change is slated to cost elders dearly, while benefiting insurance companies and drug manufacturers handsomely.

Thanks to this law, Americans who receive Social Security now and over the next decades will find Medicare taking larger and larger bites out of their monthly payments. And, in an era when private pension plans are increasingly precarious, it is disturbing to hear Bush intent on privatizing Social Security.

My support for Kerry has grown stronger in direct proportion to the opposition that a minority of Catholic bishops is mounting against him. Unlike the first JFK, he faces persistent challenges from religious leaders of his own faith. To a degree unprecedented in previous elections, they have dared to give instructions to voters.

Religious leaders have a right, and many would say a duty, to provide moral and ethical guidance. The nation needs leadership in the difficult questions brought on by modernity.

But those bishops who oppose Kerry do so by selectively choosing one set of issues while ignoring others of great importance. We do not hear from them on war and peace, capital punishment, and the poor and dispossessed. Though their own church leadership in Rome has spoken out forcefully on these issues, the bishops choose to ignore them.

I feel more than empathy with Catholic politicians who sincerely judge abortion a social evil but feel they must at least tolerate legislation that permits it. When I ran for public office in my home city, people dissatisfied with my taking this position distributed flyers against me in various Catholic parishes, an action that did not make me happy.

Unlike some others, I regard Kerry’s religious faith as among his great assets. He takes seriously the dimensions of life that go beyond the material and practical, and this does him credit.

Admittedly, Kerry’s style of being religious differs from that of his opponent and many other people. It tends to be low-key, discreet, and underplayed. That is a style I consider appropriate for public life. By contrast, the religious enthusiasm that lays claim to special messages from the Deity can spell trouble.

In later life, I feel much less illusioned than I did when the first JFK was running. History has sobered me as it has done so many of my age peers. But I see the choice this time around as clear and of crucial importance.

Richard Griffin

James Michael Curley, on being released from prison, returned to his mayoral office at Boston City Hall, and spent a short time signing contracts. As Mayor Curley left, he boasted to reporters: ““Gentlemen, I’ve accomplished more in five minutes than has been accomplished here in the last five months.”

His replacement, the usually mild-mannered John B. Hynes, was standing by to hear these words. Infuriated, Hynes decided then and there that he would run against Curley for election as mayor. He did so, and his election in 1949 marks a decisive turning point in the fortunes of the City of Boston.

This is the view of Thomas O’Connor, the preeminent historian of Boston, who last week engaged in a public dialogue with me about his native city. Now University Historian at Boston College, this genial 82-year-old scholar brings decades of experience to writing about the events and personalities of this area.

Filled with stories and anecdotes about Boston, O’Connor delights in his work as observer of three centuries of local history. He attributes inspiration for his career to his Aunt Nellie, a Miss Marple-like woman who used to take him to visit downtown.  When he was only an eighth-grader, this great-aunt gave him for Christmas a copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays.

Back to the upstart mayor John Hynes. What he did, O’Connor says, is to break down the barriers that had long stood between the Irish and Yankee communities. Instead of carrying further the ongoing feud, this dethroner of Curley reached out to the bankers and other business leaders of the city and established alliances with them. Working together, Hynes and his new allies pointed the way toward a different kind of Boston.

Another important transition, Professor O’Connor holds, was that from Cardinal O’Connell to Cardinal Cushing in 1945. Cushing reached out in ecumenical friendship to Protestant and Jewish communities, something his predecessor as archbishop had never done. He brought to an end the era of Catholic triumphalism that had alienated other religious groups.

If people in Greater Boston now feel pride about their city, it is owing in large part to Hynes and Cushing, along with the later mayors John Collins and Kevin White. Tom O’Connor sees three events in the jubilee year 1976 as bringing the attention of people living in the suburbs to the transformation that had taken place in the city.

The visit of the Tall Ships, the visit of the Queen of England, and the concerts led by Arthur Fiedler on the banks of the Charles River alerted hundreds of thousands to the new scene. In O’Connor’s words: “The visitors looked around and said ‘look what they have done.’”

Asked why Boston is now regarded as open to diversity and tolerant of gay people in particular, O’Connor guesses that the very intensity of past prejudice has produced a backlash. Even in South Boston, where the historian grew up, people of color and of divergent lifestyles are currently accepted without question. This remains in sharp contrast to the past when minorities would fear to come to Castle Island and other places in Southie.

As to the changes in Boston’s Catholics, he attributes much importance to Jack Kennedy’s election as president. “Before that, you had to be a conformist.,” he says. “Kennedy’s rise allowed people to become critics as never before.” In this new atmosphere the Berrigan brothers could demonstrate against American militarism and religious sisters picket against racism.”  And, indeed, the young John Kerry could protest the Vietnam War.

For O’Connor, one insufficiently explored part of Boston’s history is the role of Irish women who worked in Yankee households. They became what he calls “culture carriers,” acute observers of how their employers lived. In time, when they founded their own families, they passed on some of the skills and values they had picked up from those economically better off.

Like many others, O’Connor is still reeling from what he calls the downfall of the Catholic Church in Boston. “It’s like being in the eye of a hurricane,” he says of the tumultuous events that have taken place here. “It is hard to get any perspective on it and I don’t know what the outcome will be,” he adds.

Drawing on the wisdom of a long lifetime, O’Connor expresses concern about some of the changes that have come upon his native city. “Boston may change so much that it becomes just another American city,” he warns. It will take prudent decisions if we are to build wisely upon the bold initiatives taken to improve the place.

In the preface to his book “Boston A to Z,” O’Connor writes: “It is this curious blend of the old and the new, the juxtaposition of the antique and the modern, that gives Boston its most distinctive flavor.” Preserving and enhancing this mix will challenge future leaders as well as members of local communities. In an era when change takes hold so quickly, keeping a sane balance will surely test the city’s mettle.

Richard Griffin

“A man who is not a radical when young lacks a heart; a man who in old age is not a conservative lacks a head.” So runs a classic statement often attributed to the 19th century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. If he said it, Disraeli was dead wrong about my friend John Cort.

By reason of his qualities of character and intellect, John Cort deserves to be better much known. In a 2003 memoir entitled Dreadful Conversions: The Making of a Catholic Socialist, he reveals himself to be a man dynamic in both youth and old age. Written as he neared 90, it recounts a colorful career full of dramatic events and memorable personalities.

However, his socialism, democratic as it is, does not give him a seller’s market in these days of capitalism rampant worldwide. It would not take many hands to count the number of American Catholics willing to be called socialists.

He became a Catholic just after finishing Harvard College in 1935, conversion number one. In the following year, he joined the Catholic Worker in New York City, under the leadership of Dorothy Day, who published a newspaper of the same name, founded a movement centered on justice and nonviolence, and provided food and  lodging to people down and out.

After a short stint at the Catholic Worker farm in Pennsylvania, John Cort took up residence in the House of Hospitality, two blocks west of the Bowery, and helped serve daily breakfast to those who joined the breadline. More significantly for his future career, he also helped found the Association of Catholic Trade Unions, an organization that served as base for his efforts to improve the lot of workers.

In 1950, after many more adventures than can be summarized here, Cort moved back to Boston. His work as business agent for the Boston Newspaper Guild has special significance for me. John entered into negotiations on behalf of the 300 members of his union who worked for the Boston Post. The management of the Post, a newspaper then in trouble, was represented by my father.

John remembers my father as a “hard negotiator,” not surprising in view of the reverses that the paper was suffering. The Post, at one time the dominant newspaper in New England, succumbed to economic pressures in 1956.

In 1962, Cort went to the Phillipines as a Peace Corps administrator; later he headed Massacusetts’ anti-poverty agency, and ran the Model Cities program in Lynn. During all this time, he continued his involvement in labor issues and the struggle for racial justice, both nationally and locally. Moving to Roxbury in the late 1960s, he and his wife acted to promote peace and justice there and elsewhere in a troubled city.

The father of 10 children, John Cort has good reason to value family life. As an experienced journalist, he often writes for Commonweal, most recently on the subject of funerals. He has plans for his own and hopes to be waked in his parish church in Nahant. But he is not yet ready for that event: there is too much work still to be done.

One of them concerns the reform of the Catholic Church. John constantly tries to get clergy and fellow laity to take leadership in that enterprise. He still takes inspiration from Pope John XXIII, whose willingness to enter upon drastic change in old age brought about radical change in the church.

Cort remains a Vatican II Catholic, holding fast to the promise of that great church council in the middle 1960s. Though the council’s innovations favoring shared power seem to have faded, he still believes that more democracy in the church is necessary. For that reason he supports Voice of the Faithful, the lay group working for reform but laboring under resistance from ecclesiastical authority.

In what he calls his “second conversion,” Cort became formally a socialist in 1975 when he was 62 years of age. It remains surprising that it took so long, because he claims that “any Catholic who takes the papal encyclicals [letters from the Pope on social issues] seriously should logically be a socialist.”

In 1977, Cort began a period of scholarship based at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge. There he did research culminating in his 1988 book Christian Socialism: An Informal History.

For him, democratic socialism means a system of economy that “places first the satisfaction of common human needs−namely food, clothing, shelter, health, education, respect, and the good jobs at decent wages that make possible all these good and necessary things.”

As should be clear, John is a good ad for longevity. The vigor in his thinking and his robust physique make long life look good. He would freely admit the good fortune he has had – marrying well looms large among those gifts – being blessed with good health in later life, a fine education, and enough financial resources (despite his voluntary poverty as a young man.)

Back to Disraeli or whomever, I believe he would have had the good sense to jettison his mot if he had known John Cort.

Richard Griffin

A college classmate and friend of some 55 years’ standing emailed me from his native Mexico this summer with a reminder of an important event in our friendship. Carlos alerted me to the 35th anniversary, a few weeks earlier, of our having watched together Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon.

That summer, now seeming long ago, I was visiting Mexico in order to take part in a professional workshop in Cuernavaca. Afterward, I had the pleasure of visiting Carlos and his wife Leni in Mexico City. They are the ones who first uttered a greeting that I had never heard before. They welcomed me with the Spanish proverb, “Mi casa es su casa” (my home is your home), and fulfilled it magnificently.

Not only did they ply me with refreshing tequilas and tasty tamales but they gave me the best bedroom in their house, introduced me to members of their extended family, and showed me the wonders of Mexico City. They set a new standard of hospitality, one that I still consider unsurpassed.

That July 20th, Carlos and Leni had taken me for lunch to the home of their relatives, some dozens of miles from the capital. We had intended to return to Mexico City to watch the landing on the moon but lunch was late and we would not have been able to reach home in time.

Fortunately, one of Carlos’s brothers lived in Texcoco, a town only a few miles short of our original goal. This town, though small, once played an important role in Mexican history; from it came the first indigenous allies of Cortes and his invading Spanish forces.

At the time of the Spanish conquest, Carlos tells me, the Texcocans were vassals of the Nahuatls and not happy about this status. For that reason they took advantage of Cortes’ arrival and allied themselves with him. This alliance enabled the conquistador, though he had an army of only a few dozen Spaniards, to overthrow the great Mexican empire.

When I visited, Texcoco-still a rural village- presented a memorable contrast with the thrilling spectacle that we watched on television that evening. We were observers of one of the greatest technological feats in the history of the world, while sitting in a town that showed few effects of modern science.

I felt myself privileged to be there with such marvelous friends as together we hailed Neil Armstrong’s triumphant message “The Eagle has landed.”  

“One small step for man, one giant step for mankind,” was the trenchant phrase the moonwalker used to characterize that epic event. The excitement of that evening and the contrast between a small town in rural Mexico and the new terrain of the moon has stayed with me ever since.

My reason for noting this anniversary, belatedly to be sure, is not simply to celebrate the historic triumph of that date but also to underscore the values in long friendship and those that come from contact with people of nations other than one’s own.

My friend Carlos remains an alter ego of mine despite too few face-to-face meetings through the years. That makes especially precious the opportunities for actually seeing one another. When he visited Cambridge last spring, for instance, we had the pleasure of recollecting some of the experiences we shared in college and since that time.

In later life, Carlos retains the courtly manners that helped forge our friendship originally. Like others among us, he even improved himself through marriage with a charming and talented woman. He and Leni are blessed in their five adult children and their 12 grandchildren.

Their family tradition is doubly rich in the combination of German descent and Mexican heritage. In my contacts with them I feel myself culturally enhanced as I draw upon their store of experiences different from my own. I also value their spiritual tradition, one that Carlos and I found compatible early on when we belonged to a prayer group together during our college days.

Although the moon walk stands out as one of the great shared experiences in the history of our friendship, conversation, letters, and now email, maintain ongoing links. But ours is a solid enough relationship that sometimes years can pass without contact and that neglect does not spoil it.

In a letter written to another friend, Carlos recently said of me: he “looks his age, he walks slowly and stoops a bit.”  Apparently to make me less decrepit, he added: “but his face is fresh and, mostly, he continues to be very active.”

In response, I summoned up my remarkable objectivity, and refuted his erroneous opinion. How could he possibly have made that judgment about my sleek self? Clearly, he suffered the disadvantage of never seeing me play Sunday softball and sometimes actually getting a base hit.

But old is good, in my book, and this enduring friend does me no disservice by words suggestive of oncoming decrepitude. Though in time the natural forces of decline will finally separate us, nothing will negate the blessings of this friendship.

Richard Griffin

Andrew Greeley is a Chicago-based Catholic priest whose talents are manifold. Sociologist, novelist, professor, columnist, he seems never at a loss for words. In fact, his critics often claim that Father Greeley has never had an unpublished thought.

That snide remark, however, can distract from Greeley’s solid accomplishments. More than a decade ago, long before others caught on, he warned about the scandal of sexual abuse perpetrated by members of the clergy. He foresaw the disastrous consequences of these crimes and of the failure of the Catholic bishops to take action.

Now in a new book entitled Priests:A Calling In Crisis,Greeley writes about the overall situation of American Catholic priests in the years after the shocking revelations. As his title indicates, the author believes that the priesthood continues in crisis. But, relying on survey findings, he reaches some surprising and unconventional results some of which that seem to clash with that view.

In the next-to-last chapter of this short book, he lists a dozen conclusions that summarize the book’s contents. Throughout, Greeley shows himself strongly critical of views that lack sound research behind them.

Contrary to much that appears in the media, Catholic priests are no more immature than other men. In fact, “priests on the average continue to be as mature and capable of intimacy as married laymen.” And, Greeley claims, they are likely to enjoy a higher level of satisfaction in their work and with their lives than do married Protestant clergy.

Further,Greeley brands it a mistake to blame sexual abuse on members of the clergy who are homosexual. Most gay clergy, he says, remain celibate, so calls for barring homosexual men from the seminary are ill-advised. Provocatively, Greeley sees anti-Catholic prejudice at work in blaming celibacy and homosexuality for the scandals.

However, Greeley admits the presence of what he calls a “homosexual subculture” in both seminaries and dioceses. The implications of this he does not spell out.

The author adamantly rejects the view of Catholic priests as largely misfits. On the contrary, they are among the happiest people in the world. They enjoy their work, feel glad they entered this career, and would choose to do it again.

Of those who leave the priesthood, only a relatively small minority do so because they desire to marry. A mere one out of six leaves for this reason, a figure that sharply conflicts with conventional assumptions. If this finding is correct, it would seem to undermine the idea that having a married clergy would remedy current problems.

To summarize Greeley’s basic view of his fellow clergy, “Priests stay in the priesthood and are happy in the ministry because they like being priests.” Most of them are what Greeley calls “religious altruists,” that is, men who find fulfillment serving others for spiritual reasons.

However, the author believes that priests under age 45 may be different from their elders. Some indications suggest they see the priesthood as a way of exercising authority from a secure position. If this surmise holds water, then these newer clergy will presumably have trouble with their colleagues and with laypeople.

Greeley finds that the clergy in general do not accept the Church’s teaching on sexual issues. Largely out o their respect for women and recognizing the freedom of laypeople, Catholic clerics commonly dissent from official orthodoxy in this area.

Most of the clergy support the ordination of men already married and the election of bishops. An astonishing one-half are in favor of ordaining women, despite strongly worded rejections of this position by Rome.

Somewhat surprisingly, given his other findings, Greeley holds that most priests are insensitive to laity and their needs. An indication of this attitude emerges in their widespread ignorance of how dissatisfied laypeople are with the quality of priestly ministry. The clerical culture acts to wall off clergy and laity from one another.

Finally, most priests believe that the clerical abuse scandal is not their problem but rather that of the bishops. They want those bishops who failed to act to resign or even to go to jail. But priests believe that the measures the American Church has taken in response will probably work.

The views expressed in this book strike me as provocative and worth wide discussion. However, I do find a basic conflict between Father Greeley’s recognition of crisis in the priesthood with his belief that priests feel happy and fulfilled.

Richard Griffin