Time & Perspective Quote by Andrew Greeley

Greeley opens with a line that sounds like a weary confession and a provocation at once: “One cannot escape the harsh fact…” isn’t an invitation to debate so much as a refusal to let the listener hide behind piety, nostalgia, or institutional talking points. Coming from a clergyman, it lands as insider testimony, not a cheap shot. He’s signaling that denial itself is part of the disease.

The key move is the framing of priesthood as a “ministerial profession.” That professionalizes what the Church often treats as a sacred exception. By calling it a profession, Greeley smuggles in the expectation of standards, accountability, training, and consequences. “Very serious problems” stays deliberately unspecific, which is strategic: it widens the indictment beyond any single scandal or headline, implicating culture, governance, formation, and the incentives that keep bad behavior unchallenged.

Then comes the temporal gut punch: “They are not new. They did not develop yesterday or last year.” That double beat strips away the favorite institutional defense mechanism, the idea that crises are sudden, anomalous, or the work of a few bad actors. It implies a long-ignored paper trail: habits normalized, warnings minimized, systems built to protect the institution’s image over its people.

The subtext is pastoral and political. Greeley is preparing his audience for reform by dismantling the comfort of surprise. If the problems are old, the remedies can’t be cosmetic. They have to be structural, and they have to be owned.