Our reading guide includes many questions—we encourage you to pick and choose questions that fit your discussion group’s needs and interests.
We hope our suggestions for further reading are useful tools for your reflection and investigation of young women’s Catholic identity.
A diverse group of Catholic women around the country—From the Pews in the Back contributors in the Boston area, college women in St. Louis, and Vatican II Catholic women in Olympia, Washington—developed these questions & recommendations for further reading. We are indebted to them for their time and wisdom. And we are hopeful that their questions enrich and enliven your discussions and lead you to developing your own questions.
Download reading guide here.
Download suggestions for further reading here.
Based on the questions, this book enculturates young people in the acceptability of casual rejection of Catholic teaching and even of Jesus Himself, and substitutes the supremacy of personal opinion and feelings. These young people may not have had adequate education to be able to understand that some of the views expressed therein are actually heretical and holding to them obstinately is not compatible with being faithfully Catholic and participating fully in the Sacraments. Why not be honest with young people about this so that they can also be honest in their relationship with God and with His Church? Why not share the Church teachings (from Church documents, the Catechism etc) relevent to interpreting these issues in relation to Catholic faith? I have the unavoidable impression, from reading these questions, that the authors may actually be intending to lead young women away from the Body of Christ.
The reading list kicks off with a book about a fornicating priest and nun, and has other books in the same vein.
Are books like “From the Pews in the Back” basically motivated by the refusal of sexual continence? I was far from the Church for many years and my own journey has been in the opposite direction, as I grew in prayer, as I read some of the writings of some of the greatest Saints (Augustine, Teresa of Avila John of the Cross, etc), and the desire to know and to participate in the self-giving love of God. Without personally experiencing chastity, and living it deeply as a way of relationship with God and with others, and seeing for myself its fruitfulness, and encountering both struggle and deep joy, I might have a pretty similar perspective to yours. There was a time when I would have agreed with you and cheered for your perspective, well to be honest I did, very actively. Now I realize I was blinded by sin, and I truly didn’t know any better. And you know what, life is better following Jesus closely. That’s what I want for you and your readers, friendship with Him. May He who loves you, bless you.
Dear Elizabeth,
As a contributor to this book, I find it rather interesting that you perceive our stories as “motivated by the refusal of sexual continence.” It saddens me that you would judge us all as sinful sirens trying to lure “young women away from the Body of Christ.” In most cases, we are trying to show young Catholic women that there is in fact a place for us all in the Body of Christ, that the integrity of loving demanded by chastity insists that we take an honest look at how Catholicism can sometimes make us less loving of others and ourselves. I am grateful for your prayers Elizabeth, and I, too, will keep you in mine. I pray that you will know the deep spiritual freedom so often mentioned in the writings of those great saints you listed: Augustine, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross. And I trust that our prayers are heard by God who loves us all regardless of how we interpret this very human and deeply holy church to which we belong.
Much peace,
Pearl