Ridiculous Prodigal

Radical Reinvention: An Unlikely Return to the Roman Catholic Church
by Kaya Oakes

Counterpoint, 2014
(256 pages, $15.95, paperback)

reviewed by Ian Hunter

How and why and when stragglers slog their solitary path to the Church of Rome is a fascinating topic. Some, like me, become convinced of the validity of the ecclesial claims Rome asserts. Others come in following a traumatic life event. Still others turn up at a parish church because of a genuine curiosity as to just what goes on inside those doors. Fortunately, the Church is immense, capacious enough to handle all who come, whoever they are and whatever their motive. Kaya Oakes is a middle-aged Californian who teaches writing courses at the University of California at Berkeley. Radical Reinvention: An Unlikely Return to the Roman Catholic Church is her conversion story.

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Ian Hunter is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of biographies of Robert Burns, Hesketh Pearson, and Malcolm Muggeridge.

more on Catholic from the online archives

29.3—May/June 2016

Health of the Nation

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27.5—Sept/Oct 2014

The Hundred Years' War

The Culture of Death's Campaign Against the Catholic Church by Brantly Millegan

31.6—November/December 2018

Enduring Sacrilege

The Slow Vindication of Leon Podles by S. M. Hutchens

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