Art & Creativity Quote by Andrew Greeley

There’s a sly recalibration happening here: Andrew Greeley borrows the grand clerical boast - "the world is my parish" - only to downshift it into something both more modest and more radical. He’s not claiming global spiritual jurisdiction; he’s claiming a relationship. The parish isn’t geography, it’s audience. In a media age where influence is measured in reach, Greeley measures it in reply mail.

The intent is pastoral, but also self-justifying. As a priest who became a prolific novelist, columnist, and public intellectual, Greeley had to defend a vocation that looked, to church traditionalists, suspiciously like celebrity. This line reframes writing as ministry: his readers aren’t consumers, they’re parishioners; correspondence isn’t fan engagement, it’s confession-by-envelope. The subtext is a subtle rebuke to institutional narrowness. If people are seeking counsel in print - especially those who take the risk of writing back - the Church can’t pretend the real sacramental action only happens inside designated walls.

Notice the emotional pivot: "Especially the readers that write to me". Passive readership is an audience; letter-writers become a flock. That specificity does two things: it grounds the claim in human need, and it draws a moral boundary around his fame. He’s not collecting admirers; he’s accepting obligations. The last clause - "a responsibility that I enjoy" - is the most revealing. Greeley admits pleasure without apology, implying that duty and delight aren’t opposites. For a clergyman navigating modernity, that’s a quietly insurgent theology: intimacy at scale, mediated by ink, validated by care.