Lady Love, whose maternal affection
for us is revealed in Mary the Mother
of Jesus, bring us with the shepherds
to Bethlehem so that we can see in
the image of the Madonna and Child
the passionate gentleness of your
affection for us and in that image gain
strength and hope for all our lives.
We ask this in the name of the Babe
born at Bethlehem and his mother.
Amen. 

Merry Christmas and a Joyous
New Year!! -from Father Andrew Greeley and his Family 

See more about Fr. Greeley's thoughts on the image of
Mary on Christmas in "The Christmas Surprises" in
Fr. Greeley's book
Jesus: A Meditation on his Stories and His Relationships with Women,
2007

…from downtown Chicago

Health update December 2011 from downtown Chicago
Father Greeley is very much enjoying the Chicago Winter and looking forward to Christmas, family celebrations, and more Bulls basketball. Father Greeley will be enjoying Christmas Mass and dinner with his family. “He’s generally in very good spirits,” commented a family member, and “In many ways he’s kind of his old self”. Father Greeley wishes one and all a wonderful, healthy, and blessed Holiday Season. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Father Greeley is pleased to finally publish a book many have said was his mission and destiny to write. He is very thankful to those who helped compile the immense amount of data, as well as those who generated it. This book is very important to him. It is his latest, and last book (out December 2010).

Father Greeley is still interested in technology and spends time every week viewing his e-mails, He is doing his best to answer when possible. He has frequent visits from friends and colleagues; and enjoys short excursions around Chicagoland. His family arranges for him to concelebrate Mass in his home on a regular basis.

Father Greeley very much enjoys watching local programming and news. “He’s a big sports fan,” a family member said. “So he watches the Cubs, Bears, and Blackhawks.”

Father Greeley wishes to offer up A Blessing for Christmas found in
“Jesus: A Meditation on his Stories and His Relationships with Women,

” Click here for Christmas Prayer

Starting tomorrow Religion and Ethics News Weekly will broadcast a segment about Father Greeley’s life since his accident.

Here’s the link that everyone can check to find when their local PBS station will air the show:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/schedule/.

It should be about a 7 minute clip, according to the information we’ve received.

The book is dedicated to Father Greeley and has a chapter about him. Mike had these wonderful things to say about Father Greeley in the CatholicMom interview:

“Andrew Greeley was already a famous Catholic writer when I was in the seminary and when he read something I wrote in a literary magazine Fr. Greeley wrote to me and encouraged me to continue writing! When I went to him as a young priest and told him I wanted to leave and get married and asked him if he’d write a letter of introduction to his publishers in New York, he did, even though he offered to find me a psychiatrist first (I found my own seven years later). Andy wrote books for me my whole career as an editor and publisher, like The Great Mysteries, that were among the best I ever did and the best he ever wrote. He is one of the kindest men I’ve ever known.

 He was getting out of a taxi a couple of years ago and his coat caught in the door and he cracked his skull on the pavement and will probably never write another book. Andrew Greeley is one of the great Catholic minds of the latter 20th century, but I will always remember him as one of the great Catholic hearts.”

This is a wonderful book!
For more interest, recent comments, and ordering check out:

CatholicMom  and Fr Greeley’s Amazon Portal

Michael Leach is a personal friend of Father Greeley and has dedicated this book to him. It is another beautiful and moving work from an authors who is clearly in touch with everyday Catholics and his God.

As Catholics, we’ve had it. We’re beyond done with pedophilia and financial scandals, rubric-obsessed leadership and an imbecilic hierarchy that thinks, as Archbishop Dolan recently remarked, that all that needs to change in the church is people’s “perception” of it. So, why stay Catholic, indeed?

As the editor of a Catholic newspaper, whenever someone asking that question comes to me–and the number of Catholics asking that question has gone viral in recent years–what I tell them is, “You’re looking in the wrong direction. If you want to know why to stay, stop looking up (to the hierarchy) and start looking across (to the Catholics you know).” Michael Leach’s Why Stay Catholic is a book that celebrates, in incredibly heartening terms, what you will find when you look across. Continue reading this post…