Prodigal Daughters: Catholic Women Come Home to the Church

By Donna Steichen

Book Overview

In this memorable book, seventeen women of the Baby Boom generation tell their poignant personal stories of apostasy and repentance. Each left the Catholic Church to seek autonomy and fulfillment on the major cultural battlegrounds of this era. Each eventually turned homeward to find, like her prodigal brother in the best-loved of Christ's parables, that her Heavenly Father had been calling her throughout her absence, watching and yearning for her return.

Feminists in the bureaucratic networks of Catholic dissent continually predict that women will abandon the Church en masse unless they are soon admitted to the hierarchy. The women who recount their experiences in this timely and important book prove the dissenters wrong. They are representative of a growing stream of "reverts" who have recognized and repented of their errors when they rediscovered the living heart of Christ at the center of the Church.

Today, when virtually all faithful Catholics wait and pray for the return of some family member or friend who has strayed from the Church, these accounts of faith reborn offer hope and direction to lift the heart of every reader.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0898707323
• ISBN13: 9780898707328
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Length: 358 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Honest, from-the-heart stories

The conversion and re-conversion stories in this book were quite moving. Don't you just love it when reviewers here slam a book without seeming to have read it? Like the reviewer who called it a "shallow treatment" and then proceeded to bring up the standard Liberal (NON-Catholic) criticisms of the Catholic Church. Catholicism is a clearly defined system of beliefs. Those who CHOOSE to believe it do not have to worry about "Gender issues" because the Catholic faith lies at a much deeper level of belief than modern politics does. Catholicism teaches that truth comes from God's revelation of HIS self rather than from some kind of left-wing political consensus. This book does a good job of displaying this truth in lives of real women.

Stories about our forgiving Father

Prodigal Daughters offers a new twist on the familiar tale of the prodigal son. It provides the stories of 17 women who for various reasons left the faith of their youth only to later return to the Catholic Church. Their stories are compelling, honest, and inspirational.All of the women featured in the book were born during or shortly after the Baby Boom era. While the women themselves, and their stories, are quite diverse, they share a common pattern - their disillusionment with the Church, a replacement for the Church, and their eventual return to the Church.Leila Habra Miller describes her sadness at being robbed of her faith. `How easily I could have lost it all! How easily my friends and contemporaries have lost or could lose a faith they have never really understood. Inoffensive, doctrine-free catechesis doesn't provide even a minimal foundation of faith, and faith built on so flimsy a foundation cannot withstand even the smallest challenge, (p. 263).' Miller writes. As interesting as their reasons for leaving the Church are the personal reasons for each of their returns. The book is written as much for faithful Catholics as it is for those who have fallen away. Reading such personal accounts, we are allowed to share in the pain and disillusionment of these women and learn from their mistakes. In their stories we are humbled and reminded of our own sinfulness. Like the story of the prodigal son, upon their return home, these women too, discover the loving embrace of a forgiving Father.

The Holy Spirit can reach even the coldest hearts

Cast in the mold of Patrick Madrid's collection of conversions to Catholicism, Surprised by Truth (ISBN 0964261081), Mrs. Steichen collects the honest, detailed, inspirational accounts of seventeen Catholic women who describe their journey back from the arid exile of feminism, libertarianism, and other spiritual wastelands, to full communion with the Church. A highly recommended tonic for those who cannot see how the Holy Spirit will ever reach the heart of someone in a situation like those portrayed here, and a source of guidance for those who might be in such a state themselves. And thank you, too, to each of the women who have opened their grace-filled stories to us!

Powerful Testimony

My great hope for this book was that it might help me to see more distinctly the problems behind the lukewarmness and, often, apostasy of my cradle Catholic loved ones. In fact, I have received these realizations and much more besides. Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers have come of age in a world focused on the rights of the individual above all, and in this important new work we witness that within the ensuing wildfire of protest there have been deeply personal struggles to find the meaning and purpose of life; burning desires (often well-concealed by stubbornness) to encounter something greater than ourselves.Prodigal Daughters is a collection of true windows into the souls of seventeen women who questioned the Faith of their youth. We find that they were, ironically, unwilling to accept that the Church is indeed that "something greater" they had so longed for. How glorious it is to share in their journeys home! My own eyes were opened in ways that surprised me, a convert to the Faith -- opened wide to reveal the real failings within myself which had, for so many years, obstructed my own search for God's truth. I had certainly not expected such an experience in introversion and I wholeheartedly welcomed it.Powerfully hopeful in its forthright display of these inner journeys, Prodigal Daughters is an invaluable resource for those willing to face honest testimony regarding the terrible impact culture-worship, self-worship and complacency have on our faith in God and His Church.

A Riveting collection of true women's stories .

A riveting collection of true stories from 17 women of the Baby Boom generation who have completed their search for meaning. There is much to learn from their mistakes as well as from discovering what they concluded at the end of their individual quests.This book helps to explain the confusion in America's Catholic Church today. A must read for everyone: priests and pastors who are observing a 'graying of the Church' and don't seem to know why the young are leaving; those who are worried about loved ones who have turned to drugs to give meaning to their lives; those who are searching for love by involving themselves in a series of sexual relationships; indeed, everyone can benefit by getting into the thoughts and minds of those who have been there.