Saturday, April 17, 2010

Book Review: Creating New Life, Nurturing Families

Creating New Life, Nurturing Families
Sidney Callahan, St Anthony Messenger Press

This book embarks on an interesting overview of love, sex, mothering, and service. While each chapter has its own topic, they build on each other to illuminate the author's vision of how to embrace the vocation of married life and mothering. Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I did occasionally find the text somewhat dry and hard to stay engaged in. Some of the author's conclusions also seemed fairly obvious, but may be helpful for a new mother, or someone struggling with finding a sense of value for themselves within a society that often equates value with earning power. However, I very much enjoyed the chapter focused on sexuality, and think she did an excellent job explaining some of the historical factors contributing to the often paradoxical approach the Catholic Church has sometimes appeared to have about sexual issues.
The book is organized for use in study groups, with each chapter ending with questions, a biblical reading, and prayer. Callahan's themes of everyday heroines and transformation through suffering may make interesting discussion topics. I did wonder whether the experience of the book might have been enhanced by sharing the ideas with others.

I received a free copy of the book from the Catholic Company in return for my honest review. This review was written as part of the Catholic book Reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on Creating New Life, Nurturing Families .


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