Marriage and Parenthood: The Catholic Ideal

Then he follows the couple into married life. A husband’s love must be affectionate, practical and exclusive, and he spells out what practical means. A wife’s obedience is real but limited, and the running of the house and the babies is hers, with the husband to have nothing to say. On the marriage bed he writes with a plainness he defends on the ground of necessity, setting out what the Church permits, what she counsels, and why. He goes on to childbirth, including what to do when a baby is miscarried, to the blessings of a large family, and to the day a small child asks where babies come from.

The last chapters are for parents: love before correction, no favorites, a Catholic school chosen with care and then a teacher left alone, one good religious picture on the wall, a shelf of Catholic books, and the school bills paid on time. It is a short book, finished in an evening, and there is hardly a question a Catholic couple could ask that it does not answer in plain words.