Sex and Love in the Home, Second Edition

""This book inaugurates a completely new way of thinking about the ethics of marriage and sex. I know of no book on the subject more promising than what McCarthy has achieved here.""
Stanley Hauerwas
""Much has been written in Christian theology about sex, love, and procreation, but their social meanings and contributions are much more rarely addressed. McCarthy now takes this greatly neglected task, eloquently connecting the Christian household to the common good. All those who want to realize the social vocation of the Christian family will find in this work a rich and challenging resource for understanding and for life.""
Lisa Sowle Cahill, J. Donald Monan Professor of Theology, Boston College
""This book inaugurates a completely new way of thinking about the ethics of marriage and sex. I know of no book on the subject more promising than what McCarthy has achieved here. I think that, as people look back in the next fifty years, they will view Sex and Love in the Home as the beginning of an entirely different way of conceptualizing not only our lives in and out of marriage but also of how we ought to think about our moral existence more generally.""
Stanley M. Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics, Duke University
""Drawing on his own experience of learning how to be a husband and father, David Matzko McCarthy offers wonderfully incisive and readable reflections on the habits of the household--a neighborly space which resists consumerism--and enables sexual relationships to be ordinary, meaningful, and passionate. If you think that all that Christian theology has to say about sex and relationships is twaddle about ""complementarity"" and ""family values"", then this is the book for you.""
Gerard Loughlin, Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
The new edition of the popular Sex and Love in the Home challenges those accounts of marriage that treat the interpersonal aspects of marriage apart from economic and political questions, and proposes that marriage and family flourish when part of an interdependent network of households in community. The new edition includes new discussions arranged around a model of the ""imperfect"" family unit. What happens when families adopt, the concept of ""living together"", same-sex marriage and relationships, long-term care for the ill within the home are all discussed.
Sex and Love in the Home draws upon anthropological descriptions of community-based reciprocity, sociologies of economy, and theological conceptions of the social body. Throughout the book, day-to-day life in a neighborhood is put into conversation with theological inquiry about the love of God and the role of the church in the world.
David Matzko McCarthy is the Fr. James M. Forker Professor of Catholic Social Teaching at Mount St Mary's University, Emmitsburg, Maryland.