Kathy Rudy's book is subtitled, Gender, Homosexuality and theTransformation of Christian Ethics. From that one might think thatthe thrust of the book would be about how the Church can transform her moral sexual ethics. However, half the book is spent on analyzing the position of the Christian Right. While this part seemed well documented, one wonders whether that should have been given as much space given the stated focus of the book. Only in the last chapter does Rudy actually deal with complementarity, unitivity and her addition to the ethic, hospitality.

Her detailed analysis of the Christian Right is perceptive, but that same attention to detail is skipped in the last chapter.

The book was disappointing in the sense that the title and subtitle seemed to suggest another kind of approach. END

Rudy's take on gender theology and how we as Christians can move past it are at once liberating and a little bit scary. I wholeheartedly agree with her call to return to the community of the Christian church, that our relationships should be based around baptism, not family, and that how we relate to God and to each other should be not be based on our gender or sexuality. Her concept of what constitutes moral sex, though, needs to be studied with care. To base the morality of the sex act on community needs and hospitality invites a misread that would sanction all sorts of irresponsible sex acts under the guise of "communal sex." I don't necessarily disagree, but I think a more thorough explanation of what exactly this version of moral sex does and does not look like would have been in order.

I appreciate what Kathy Rudy is trying to do with this book, but I wonder if it isn't based on a romantic communitarian myth about the essential unity of all women if only we could get right- wing women to change their minds about abortion.

I am a pro-choice Catholic woman,and I really have to ask why she didn't bother to have a look at the work of Catholics for a Free Choice or the WomenChurch movement before she made inaccurate generalisations about faith and feminism. For the record, pro-choice Catholicism is not coeval with liberal Catholicism, no what Rudy believes. I think most pro-choice Catholics would prefer an ethics of open communitarianism and preferential option for the poor and oppressed. Indeed, it is the paradox between anti-abortion social policies that leave women bleeding and dying from backstreet abortions and the call to serve the poor and oppressed that drives most pro-choice Catholics I know. As far as the comments about intellectual disability goes too, Rudy needs to have a closer look at the exact nature of some forms of foetal disability that render viability impossible. I wish Rudy and Faye Ginsburg would wake up. Romantic communitarianism will not help women. Practical solutions will, including a more just society for reproductive choice to occur in.