Sexual Wisdom for Catholic Adololescents is not a book I will be handing over to my older teens (it's recommended for 16-17 year olds or juniors in high school); not because I don't think they can handle the information but because I think the book focuses too much on 'scare' tactics. I was looking for a program that would focus on the joys of remaining chaste and celibate until marriage instead of scaring kids with statistics about STDs, unwanted pregnancies, etc.
At times the language used was too coarse; I would have preferred clinical, dictionary or polite conversation terminology. The author failed to footnote most of his data. For example, in Lesson 5 he includes a 2 page chart on Sexually Transmitted Diseases (including name, symptoms, accuracy of screening tests, treatment and complications) but has no footnote to support his claims and the book has no bibliography. While Dr. Wetzel's statistics may be accurate, the book comes across as less scholarly by omitting such important features in a non-fiction work.
Sexual Wisdom does include quotes from well-known chastity speakers and authors such as Colleen Mast and Christopher West as well as the Bible, the Catehchism, Theology of the Body (which the author considers "education on the graduate university level") and encyclicals but for me they got lost amidst the statistics of the negatives.
I would not recommend giving this book to your teen but parents might be able to use the information for their own education.
You can purchase this book here.
I wrote this review of Sexual Wisdom for Catholic Adolescents for the Tiber River Blogger Review program, created by Aquinas and More Catholic Goods. For more information and to purchase, please visit Aquinas and More Catholic Goods.
Tiber River is the first Catholic book review site, started in 2000 to help you make informed decisions about Catholic book purchases.
1 comment:
nice post. thanks.
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