It was time, evidently, that someone should make a thorough study of marriage as an institution in the twentieth century, and do so from a Christian point of view. It was time to look at the way people actually think and live their marriages and consider those of others. It was time to be unsatisfied with the Christian or Catholic label as sufficient indication of what the labelled ones think and feel. It was time to do all this in a way that would make clear to priests (priests both at work and in the process of education) the real nature of the problems they have to cope with in their parishes, and help them to do so with compassion but also with understanding. It is important that this should be done because the state of the institution of marriage in a particular community, and the attitudes and situations that attend it, dictate the structure and growth of that society, form its behaviour in other departments of life, and decide its future for good or ill.

Father Haring is nothing if not thorough. His 488 pages examine every conceivable aspect of marriage and family life from the sociological, theological and practical points of view, and every point he makes is supported by statistics of public-opinion polls (mostly from Germany, Holland and Belgium). And since my final, depressing conclusion at the end of all this hard work is that the book is a monumental disaster I had better begin by saying all the nice things I can find to say, and there are plenty.