The Prodigal Church

Restoring Catholic Tradition in an Age of Deception

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For too many decades, our Catholic Church has diluted her distinctive traditions in order to please contemporary culture, losing not only her patrimony but much of her moral authority – just when the world needs it most.

Today, with our country and our Church suffering their worst crises since the 1960s, distressed American Catholics are understandably hungry for big solutions to their big problems. Fortunately, where today so many see only darkness, author Brandon McGinley sees light, arguing that these dire days offer us an opportunity to rescue our Church — if only we have the holy confidence to seize this God-given moment.

Unlike many who have responded to these crises, McGinley does not propose that we return to an unrealistically romanticized Catholic past. Rather, dwelling in the perennial teachings of the Church, which have animated the best of ages, he shows how, with the help of much prayer and sacramental grace, we can reinvigorate our present Christian communities in ways that will transform not only ourselves and the Church but the entire world.

With painstaking clarity, he unearths what was working — and what wasn’t — in the decades before Vatican II, and he shows how genuine Catholic renewal can emerge only from authenticity to our Catholic identity and tradition, applied to the contemporary world. We have everything we need — we have Christ! — but we need the confidence to bring His grace and truth to the world.

We live in a time when Catholic institutions are attached to the prevailing order, but McGinley argues they must operate without political fear as witnesses to the truth of the Catholic Faith with a boldness that emerges from holiness, which is the product of grace acting on our souls and in our communities.

Here is our road map for renewal — a roadmap for families, for schools, for parishes, and, indeed, for the institutional Church. In this crisis, we can complain and despair, or we can seize the opportunity to demonstrate that the Catholic Church is the means to bringing the grace and peace of heaven to earth.

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"'The Prodigal Church' is an essential intervention from one of our most exciting young Catholic commentators, offering both a forceful critique of the bourgeois spirit in American Catholicism and a practical, humane blueprint for renewal."

Sohrab Ahmari
Op-ed editor, The "New York Post"

"This book is as clear-eyed about the past as it is about the future. McGinley draws from history so that we can learn from the saints’ successes. But he applies those lessons to the future in ways that are fresh, realistic, and astonishingly creative. There is no other book like this. I hope many readers will take it to heart and take it to prayer."

Mike Aquilina
Vice President of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, Author

"McGinley paints the challenging landscape of the modern Church with honesty and clarity. But this book is about more than the challenges we face, it is a brilliant and insightful examination of what the Church can be. No book is more effective at communicating what we must recover, ways to innovate, and how we must act in order to have a thriving Church in the 21st century. McGinley never falls into cynicism nor mere wishful thinking, but bases his vision in what we can anchor our hope for the future in: the grace of God."

Haley Stewart
Author, podcaster, and speaker

"Brandon McGinley’s book is a bracing work, rooted in a fierce love for the Church and Christ’s people. McGinley proposes simply that the Church must be the Church, and reminds us how to be rooted and receive what God gives."

Leah Libresco
Author, Speaker, Blogger

Fails to See the Universal Picture

He writes as if what happened in the early 20th century was unique to America. The changes in the church came from Rome. The "liturgical factories", those were allowed by Rome due to the lack of priests and buildings in America. Everything that happened had Rome as its origin. The traditional movement in America has its origins in France. This hyper focus on America, and not addressing the core criticisms of the French traditional movement (SSPX, concern with invalid sacraments within the Novus Ordo religion). A first step will be a return to traditional Catholicism, which means dropping the Mass of Paul VI and going back to the Catholic Mass.

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A Superb Blueprint for Renewing the Church in America

This is a book every Catholic in America needs to read. Brandon McGinley, while being completely docile and faithful to the Magisterium, reveals the problems in the Church in America stem from seeking to “fit in” in America and compromising our mission and identity as Catholics in the process, and the remedy is simply to live and proclaim what we believe without compromising any of the Church’s teachings and witness to Christ through reverent and beautiful celebrations of the sacraments, restoring friendship to its proper place in the life of the Church, and building intentional Catholic communities that draw others to Christ and His Church. Two thumbs up and five out of five stars.