To the Editors - Letter to the Editor

Dead fowl

I am less pessimistic about young Catholics than either James Fisher ("Young American Catholics," November 23) or Peter Steinfels ("The Next Generation: A Diagnosis," November 23), but their impressions on the subject are worth more than the book, Young Adult Catholics, because they do not pretend to social science professionalism. With the exception of the chapter on Catholic identity, the data on which the book is based are statistically worthless. One cannot make valid estimates from it to the Catholic population of young adults. Half the primary sampling units (dioceses) were chosen because they were near the homes of the researchers. Parishes within the dioceses were chosen "in consultation" with the local chancery offices. This is not professional research methodology. In the harsh language of the trade about such flawed sample designs: garbage in, garbage out. One might just as well read the entrails of dead fowl. It is time that the Lilly Endowment realize that such projects disgrace it. It is time also for Commonweal to make a policy of asking someone at Fordham or Columbia or NYU to read the technical appendix of a book and determine the adequacy of the sample design before it decides to make a gantze tsimmes out of it.

(REV.) ANDREW M. GREELEY
Chicago, Ill.

The reviewer replies:

I greatly appreciate how survey data, including Andrew M. Greeley's, can correct our otherwise subjective impressions. At the same time, I have never encountered a social science survey on a nontrivial topic that was without shortcomings. If the sample design was perfect, the wording of some important questions was debatable. If the questions were worded superbly, other crucial questions went unasked. And there were always the less visible problems of actual execution: the skill and accuracy of the telephone interviewers, the number of times people were called back, the hours and days of the phone calls, the length of the calls and number of questions that could reasonably be asked. There are always trade-offs of time, money, convenience, etc.

Among social scientists whose work I have used, again including Greeley's, the authors of Young Adult Catholics are outstanding in describing their methodology clearly and in detail, including their choice of nearby dioceses (p. 243) and need for episcopal cooperation, and in exploring the kinds and degrees of bias that may have resulted. "One cannot make valid estimates" from their data "to the Catholic population of young adults," Father Greeley declares. That merely echoes what I wrote in my essay ("the young adults of this study do not represent all current young adult Catholics") and what the authors themselves repeatedly (pp. 40, 72, 116, 242, and elsewhere) acknowledge.

I was certainly not uncritical of this study, its presentation of data, or its interpretations. Yet readers can easily recognize what its sample of traceable confirmands represents and does not represent, can take into consideration what adjustments its biases seem to call for, and can use its findings as useful approximations until something better comes along. This may not be heaven, but it is not "worthless," "garbage," "the entrails of dead fowl," or a "disgrace" either.

The tone of Greeley's letter is not exactly surprising; indeed, after all these years, it borders on the traditional. But what it adds to the clarity, usefulness, or persuasiveness of his criticism escapes me.

PETER STEINFELS

Nostalgia with flair

As always, Father Andrew Greeley addressed with flair a relevant church issue in his "A Cloak of Many Colors" (November 9). He laments the passing of sacramentals such as a proliferation of statues and praying the rosary. I question whether these practices have been completely eliminated. Nostalgia is always attractive, and restoration seems to attract a new generation of Catholic seminarians. Perhaps what has happened is that we are hearing a better theology. Some of the older sacramentals have moved to the periphery, and a practice of the faith in which "sacramentals" such as altar, ambo, Scripture, assembly, and sacramental signs of water, bread, and wine moved to the center. We have to surround these with new and appropriate "metaphors." Isn't that what renewal is about?

(REV.) TONY SCHUMACHER
Oregon, Wisc.

A joke, right?

The November 9 article by Andrew Greeley was so funny that I thought it was "tongue in cheek"!

He must be writing from the privileged point of view of a male Catholic priest. For the laity, the laws of the church made it a faith of fear, constant guilt, and a sense of never matching up to the demands of the clergy.

If Greeley thinks that as the people of God we are defined by such externals as fish on Friday, having rosary beads, and being capable of plainchant, then how far are we from being disciples of Christ? Vatican II was meant to bring us back to the simplicity of the gospel call, "love God and neighbor." The emphasis is on "love" and not on following rules. We should be seen to be Catholics by our actions.