["The Making of the Popes 1978" is Father Andrew Greeley's first venture] into the New Journalism.

His model, he says, is Theodore H. White, his fellow witness to history; and with his teasingly disguised sources (two, he says, for every allegation), he clearly identifies with Woodward and Bernstein. But sometimes he seems closer to Lincoln Steffens, whipping up, for Playboy serialization, "The Shame of Vatican City," discovering some of the same intrigue and disillusionment in Rome that the famous muckraker found in St. Louis and Philadelphia, but ever hopeful that his journalistic "shaming" would help inspire the city's reform.

True to the New Journalism genre, Father Greeley brings in his own intellectual and emotional baggage at every opportunity. He is depressed about the decline and drift in the church; the American bishops have ignored his sociological surveys, including his study of the priesthood and his findings on the devastating...