Triple Date
Christian Courtship, Couples in Love, & Ask Me Anything
Christian Courtship in an Oversexed World: A Guide for Catholics
by T. G. Morrow
Our Sunday Visitor, 2003
(299 pages, $13.95, paperback)
Couples in Love: Straight Talk on Dating, Respect, Commitment, and Sexuality
by
John R. Waiss
Crossroad, 2003
(230 pages, $19.95, paperback)
Ask Me Anything: Provocative Answers
for College Students
by J. Budziszewski
NavPress, 2004
(173 pages, $9.99, paperback)
reviewed by Mike Aquilina
One day you find yourself holding a newborn. The next day you find yourself responsible for teenagers, and suddenly the questions of dating and courtship—questions that, increasingly, are setting serious Christians apart from the rest of parenting society—become more than academic.
This year, my wife and I found ourselves parents of two teens, one boy and one girl. Terri and I knew where we stood on the boy-girl questions. But we also knew that we needed to prepare for the inevitable “why” questions. So we started reading. I’ll discuss the three books we found most helpful.
Sexual Summa
T. G. Morrow’s Christian Courtship in an Oversexed World is remarkable: It’s a popular treatment, conversational like a magazine column, yet at the same time a very thorough and even systematic discussion of sexual morality.
In fact, it is somewhat like a Summa. The author engages all the major “relationship” books and fads of the last decade or so (Venus and Mars, etc.) on their own terms, sifts out the good, trashes the bad, and brings every discussion to the best Christian conclusion.
But Morrow writes so well that you hardly notice you’re doing theology. He draws stories from his own dating experience and from his extensive pastoral work as a chaplain for several Christian singles groups. The narratives carry the argument better than any proof ever could.
Mike Aquilina is vice president of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology (www.salvationhistory.com) and a general editor of The Catholic Vision of Love catechetical series.
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more on sex from the online archives
25.4—July/August 2012
The Corrosive & Far-Reaching Fallout of the Sexual Revolution by Anthony Esolen
23.5—September/October 2010
The Loss of a Christian Understanding of Virginity Is Pure Tragedy by Eleanor Bourg Donlon
27.6—Nov/Dec 2014
Tales of Forbidden Stereotypes
Real-Life Men & Women & the Tragic Loss of Human Comedy by Anthony Esolen
more from the online archives
30.2—March/April 2017
The Education of Children Takes Generations of Fidelity by W. Ross Blackburn
31.5—September/October 2018
Errands into the Moral Wilderness
Forms of Christian Family Witness & Renewal by Allan C. Carlson
18.2—March 2005
On Conservatism as Vexation, Vanity & Near Impossibility by Graeme Hunter
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