The Prodigal World
By Fulton J. Sheen The present age is an age of plenty; it is also an age of famine. This famine, declares Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, is a famine for faith among those who doubt, a famine for God among those who substituted illusions for majestic faiths, and a famine for love amongst those who war. This spiritual famine has real consequences in the material order of things. Exclude God and society will devolve into corruption, contempt, and chaos. Yet “social reconstruction is conditioned upon spiritual regeneration”: if the world is ever to recover its lost social peace, it must once more find God. In these seventeen addresses, broadcast from December 29, 1935, to April 12, 1936, Sheen interprets the parable of the Prodigal Son in the light of spiritual experience in the modern world and points the way back to the Father’s House. I will arise and go to my father, and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee. (Luke 15:18) Preached with his customary convictio