Books

PRODIGAL DAUGHTERS: Catholic women come home to the Church, ed. Donna Steichen

Reviewed by Michael Daniel

Contents - Aug 2011 - Buy a copy now Homily: Benedict XVI: Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary - Pope Benedict XVI The Carbon (dioxide) Tax: a religious perspective - Peter Finlayson News: The Church Around the World Britain's anti-Christian brave new world - AD2000 REPORT Events: In defence of the authentic meaning of marriage - Canberra, 16 August 2011 - Babette Francis Bishop Conley on the new Missal translation: 'The very words of God' - Bishop James Conley Defending the Catholic Church against ill-informed attacks - Fr John Flynn LC Obituary: John Wright (1923-2011): pillar of the Catholic faith - Michael Gilchrist Exegesis: Genesis account of creation and fall: what does the Church teach? - John Young Young adult Catholic ministry: further progress - Br Barry Coldrey Letters: Archbishop Hickey - Frank Bellet Letters: Unseen kindness - Anne Lastman Letters: , - Arnold Jago Letters: Catholic schools - Fr Brendan Dillon PP Letters: No oxygen - Fr M. Durham Letters: Rose-coloured glasses - Cathy Cleary Letters: Christian heritage - Fr Bernard McGrath Letters: Anglican ordinariate - Michael Apthorp Books: PRODIGAL DAUGHTERS: Catholic women come home to the Church, ed. Donna Steichen - Michael Daniel (reviewer) Books: STANDARD-BEARERS OF THE FAITH: Lives of the Saints for Young and Old - Terri Kelleher (reviewer) Poetry: Consequences - Bruce Dawe Books: Order books from www.freedompublishing.com.au Reflection: The new evangelisation: 'missionary spirit' needed - Fr Dennis W. Byrnes

A book that challenges popular feminist stereotypes

PRODIGAL DAUGHTERS:
Catholic women come home to the Church
Edited by Donna Steichen
(Ignatius Press, first published 1999, 353pp, $33.90. ISBN: 0898707-323-9

This is a book that will challenge and defy popular stereotypes. If elements of the popular press and radical feminists from within the Church are to be believed, the Catholic Church is an organisation that oppresses women and has only itself to blame for the huge loss of female numbers.

Such an interpretation is challenged by the stories of the reverts to Catholicism contained in this anthology. While each story is unique, as Donna Steichen notes in her introduction and conclusion, some common patterns emerge.

Many of the women left the practice of their faith because they perceived that the Church was either irrelevant to their needs or their aspirations as women. Born and raised in the decades immediately following WWII, they came of age in the 1960s in a culture that questioned and rebelled against received values. It was also an era in which women not only demanded equal rights but gained more opportunities.

Faith weakened

Not only were there largely external pressures on Catholic women entering adulthood for Steichen also identifies factors within the Church in the years following the Second Vatican Council that shook the faith of these women: vacuous faith formation in the form of defective religious instruction; and changes in the liturgy which all too often replaced the Latin Mass with banal celebrations of Mass, featuring music described as "sacro-pop", and being riddled with liturgical abuses and lacking any sense of the sacred.

Sadly many of these women experienced emptiness in their years away from the Church with some of them enduring the pain of broken marriages. Others, discovering they were pregnant, underwent abortions and suffered what has now been described as post-abortion trauma syndrome.

Some were extremely angry with the Church, seeing it as a basis for patriarchal oppression while others simply saw it as irrelevant.

Given what were often negative experiences in the Church and the problems within the Church that in some cases were the catalyst for lapsing away, it is a testament to the power of God's grace that these women not only returned to the faith but have themselves become staunch defenders and champions of it.

The routes by which they returned are all unique; however, some had similar experiences. Many ended up in Protestant denominations and returned when they were challenged by the claims of the Catholic Church. Others, such as Moira Noonan, left behind the New Age movement, while others such as Constance Buck realised that Consciousness Raising seminars were no alternative to authentic spirituality.

The odd one out on many levels is Juli Wiley who became ensconced with radical feminist groups within the Church led by luminaries such as Sr Joan Chittister.

This is an inspiring book. The accounts of the work of God in the lives of the women contained therein are an inspiration, as Steichen notes, particularly to parents whose daughters seem to have abandoned the faith. She concludes by talking about the special vocation of parents to pray for such children. The good news from this book is that - contrary to popular opinion -radical secular feminism has not had the final word!

Michael E Daniel teaches at a Melbourne independent secondary school.

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 24 No 7 (August 2011), p. 17