Why Stay Catholic?: Unexpected Answers to a Life-changing Question

First Place, Popular Presentation of the Catholic Faith category
Catholic Press Association book awards, 2012
“The book resonates with the practical, the joyous, the spirit-lifting, and the reality of what it means to live as a Catholic.”
Third Place, Spirituality (paperback) category
Catholic Press Association book awards, 2012
“This is a beautifully written book which draws one to meditate deeply on one’s own loyalty to the Catholic tradition. This is truly a book for our age.”
Third Place, General Interest category
ACP Excellence in Publishing Awards, 2012

The uplifting book Why Stay Catholic? by Michael Leach is an uplifting book about what's right in the Catholic Church today, and why tomorrow offers such hope and promise.

Scandals in the Catholic Church won't go away. The uninspiring sermons keep coming, and lay people who don't feel fulfilled find themselves asking Catholic questions, and looking for Catholic answers. This leads them to the greater question, Why Stay Catholic?

In Why Stay Catholic?, national best-selling author Michael Leach offers surprising, inspiring, and timely answers to this life-changing Catholic question. Leach joyfully offers readers plenty of reasons to celebrate being Catholic, reasons to celebrate the Catholic faith here and now, and reasons to believe that the Catholic Church can and will change.

This book is not theology lite, it is spirituality with spine. It is about the beauty at the heart of Catholicism. While many authors wax nostalgic about the way things used to be in the Church, Why Stay Catholic signs with one unique voice, backed up by a chorus of original voices of all ages and from all times.

Why Stay Catholic? answers the question Why Be Catholic? and is about the things that last because they are spiritual. As such, the book is really an invitation to "taste and see how good the Lord is." Cradle Catholics, recovering Catholics, ex-Catholics, and even non-Catholics will love this healing antidote to a faltering faith and a wounded Church.

MICHAEL LEACH is publisher emeritus and editor-at-large of Orbis Books. A leader in Catholic publishing for thirty years, he has edited and published more than three thousand books. His authors include Nobel Prize winners, National Book Award winners, and hundreds of Catholic Book Award winners. He has served as president of the Catholic Book Publishers Association and the ecumenical Religion Publishers Group. Before joining Orbis as publisher in 1997 he was president of the Crossroad Publishing Company in New York City. In 2007 the Catholic Book Publishers Association honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Dubbed “the dean of Catholic book publishing” by U.S. Catholic magazine, he has authored or edited several books of his own, including the bestseller I Like Being Catholic and A Maryknoll Book of Prayer, The People’s Catechism, and I Like Being Married. A popular speaker at conferences nationwide, Michael lives in Connecticut with Vickie, his wife of forty-eight years.