Leonard Silk examines five disparate thinkers in The Economists

petuated by dissident Catholics themselves: in their self-conscious revolt against official teachings, Catholic intellectuals have assumed a contemptuous view of ordinary Catholic laymen.

So here is Greeley, ready, willing, able, and eager to prove that Catholics are “making it” in the American ethos. They have caught up in economic, educational, and intellectual achievement, and their politics are, by Greeley’s standards, enlightened: they typically support New Deal social reforms, were doveish before it was fashionable, and are (especially in proportion as they attend Catholic schools) well-disposed toward other minorities. They are in many respects “social” conservatives, but then so is practically everyone else; and they were not vociferously antiwar largely because their patriotism was affronted by the tone of Sixties protest. Failing to perceive all this, says Greeley, the Left has been doing its unsuccessful best to drive Catholics out of the Democratic Party, while the Right has entertained vain pipe-dreams of recruiting them in a conservative coalition.

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S. Ross

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petuated by dissident Catholics themselves: in their self-conscious revolt against official teachings, Catholic intellectuals have assumed a contemptuous view of ordinary Catholic laymen.

So here is Greeley, ready, willing, able, and eager to prove that Catholics are “making it” in the American ethos. They have caught up in economic, educational, and intellectual achievement, and their politics are, by Greeley’s standards, enlightened: they typically support New Deal social reforms, were doveish before it was fashionable, and are (especially in proportion as they attend Catholic schools) well-disposed toward other minorities. They are in many respects “social” conservatives, but then so is practically everyone else; and they were not vociferously antiwar largely because their patriotism was affronted by the tone of Sixties protest. Failing to perceive all this, says Greeley, the Left has been doing its unsuccessful best to drive Catholics out of the Democratic Party, while the Right has entertained vain pipe-dreams of recruiting them in a conservative coalition.