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The Domestic Church: Room by Room, a Study Guide for Mothers
Don t cry over spilled milk. Transcend it. Pope John Paul II wrote that the little domestic Church, like the greater Church, needs to be constantly and intensely hence its duty regarding permanent education in the faith. That s a tall order for busy Catholic mothers. You might even say it s as big as a house. You wouldn t want to clean the whole thing in one fell swoop, but if you take it one room at a time you ll get the job done. In a systematic course that s equally useful for groups as for individuals, this talented author shows how to remodel a home and form a family after the spiritual design of Holy Mother Church.
254 pages, Paperback
First published October 20, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 16, 2009
This book has absolutely nothing to do with the physical dwelling where a family lives. The title "room by room" as well as the chapter titles may give the reader the impression that this is the case. I don't object to the metaphor but it doesn't add anything to the book either.
I read this book straight through and not as part of a group study as the author intended. I think it would make an excellent group study where you can really discuss the topics brought up and get multiple view points. There are discussion questions included that at first I diligently went over. But in the leaders guide in the back, I discovered that most of the questions have a "correct" answer based on the information presented in the book. There were some open ended questions but most of them felt like school questions testing to see if the student read the book rather than discussion questions. Again, if I had a group with whom to discuss the questions and the leader's guide answer was included as part of the group discussion, I might feel differently.
There is a lot of good information and I think it was fairly comprehensive in addressing the issues a Catholic mother faces. I could almost envision this study being offered specifically to prepare new wives and mothers for their vocations.
I liked The Heart of Motherhood Finding Holiness in the Catholic Home by O'Boyle as a book to read straight through better.
I read this book straight through and not as part of a group study as the author intended. I think it would make an excellent group study where you can really discuss the topics brought up and get multiple view points. There are discussion questions included that at first I diligently went over. But in the leaders guide in the back, I discovered that most of the questions have a "correct" answer based on the information presented in the book. There were some open ended questions but most of them felt like school questions testing to see if the student read the book rather than discussion questions. Again, if I had a group with whom to discuss the questions and the leader's guide answer was included as part of the group discussion, I might feel differently.
There is a lot of good information and I think it was fairly comprehensive in addressing the issues a Catholic mother faces. I could almost envision this study being offered specifically to prepare new wives and mothers for their vocations.
I liked The Heart of Motherhood Finding Holiness in the Catholic Home by O'Boyle as a book to read straight through better.
August 21, 2025
Such a good read, especially for me as a young mother. This book helped remind me of the holiness of and sanctifying power of motherhood and doing motherly and household duties with love. Would have loved to do this as a small group with other women and actually fill out the study guide as it was made for, but still fantastic regardless. A must read for mothers!
February 19, 2013
I suppose because I have read all of Kim Hahn's books: chosen and cherished; beloved and blessed etc that this book just paled in comparison to them.
If you're looking for a nice collection of quotes from the Holy Father and his teachings and from Mother Teresa, then indeed this is the book for you. I found it lacking in real practical examples and "meat". There was barely any story to weave together all the quotes from these great teachings from JPII, Benedict the XVI and Mother Teresa, whom the author knew personally and made it known many times throughout the book. The questions within and at the end of each chapter were just "okay", and we found that we took our discussions into other areas and used these as a mere starting point. Lastly, the oddest part of this book was the chapter titles and there connection to rooms in the house. I read another book (I believe by Thomas Howard) in which a similar approach was made connecting rooms of the home to our role in the Christian life. I barely see a connection to the foyer and the Blessed Mother or the Kitchen and our role as prayerful women. These connections were strained, to say the least.
All that said, I did glean bits of wisdom from this book and underlined several quotes to copy down for future reference. None were from Mrs Cooper O'Boyle but all were from church documents or Mother Teresa.
If you're looking for a nice collection of quotes from the Holy Father and his teachings and from Mother Teresa, then indeed this is the book for you. I found it lacking in real practical examples and "meat". There was barely any story to weave together all the quotes from these great teachings from JPII, Benedict the XVI and Mother Teresa, whom the author knew personally and made it known many times throughout the book. The questions within and at the end of each chapter were just "okay", and we found that we took our discussions into other areas and used these as a mere starting point. Lastly, the oddest part of this book was the chapter titles and there connection to rooms in the house. I read another book (I believe by Thomas Howard) in which a similar approach was made connecting rooms of the home to our role in the Christian life. I barely see a connection to the foyer and the Blessed Mother or the Kitchen and our role as prayerful women. These connections were strained, to say the least.
All that said, I did glean bits of wisdom from this book and underlined several quotes to copy down for future reference. None were from Mrs Cooper O'Boyle but all were from church documents or Mother Teresa.
November 25, 2010
This book is intended for use as a group study, but I did the study on my own. This was the best book on being a woman/mother/wife I have read in a very long while. The author's words spoke to my soul. Although not polished and packaged like many other women's studies, I found her directness helpful. The themes were fairly standard (patience, how to pray as a busy mother, vocation, evangelism) but appreciated how she drew on the spirituality of Blessed Mother Teresa and the late Great John Paul II in each of these areas. A beautiful, helpful book that I would recommend to all mothers.
December 31, 2009
Great book to use for a study group; her chapters gave our group usually more than enough material to review during our discussion. The book was very supportive of stay-at-home moms, and easy to read. The author references other documents that readers can review later for more in-depth reading on a particular topic. Moms in our group especially liked the original prayers at the end of each chapter.
May 14, 2011
Perfect for self-reflection or womens' study groups.
February 17, 2013
I read this as part of a study group. I felt like most of the ideas in the book were good, but the writing was a bit of a turn off. It was repetitive in parts and occasionally overused the word "should." As in, a mother should... and a wife should... That just kind of rubbed me the wrong way even when I agreed those were good things for a wife and/or mother to do.
The discussion questions were sometimes not open-ended enough. But in general our group was able to find things to talk about and I don't regret that this book was choosen. However, I was not able to attend the group each week and didn't bother reading the chapters I missed.
The discussion questions were sometimes not open-ended enough. But in general our group was able to find things to talk about and I don't regret that this book was choosen. However, I was not able to attend the group each week and didn't bother reading the chapters I missed.
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June 1, 2011I agreed with most everything she was saying...I just couldn't get into this book, though, for some reason. I think it had more to do with the style of writing than the content. I've read materials along this line, so I guess it just felt...boring. :o/
November 9, 2011
Great information/insights, not very well-written.
November 23, 2012
Great reminders and ideas of how to raise a family in and increasingly secular world. However, having read several Christian based parenting books it seemed a bit repetitive.
November 15, 2017
What was really good about this book was the extensive collection of relevant church document excerpts and quotations from saints that support the beauty of motherhood and the vital importance of the role of the family in the world. This, for someone new to the idea, would be both a huge validation and an encouragement. The author is clearly passionate about her topic and writes from a place of experience, which is highly desirable in a study book such as this.
However...
The author's own writing is really only so-so, and her own thoughts are actually fairly few and far between, so extensive are the quotes. The discussion/reflection questions are, frankly, strange, because a large portion of them ask for factual regurgitation from the text, not interpretation/application, and also have the correct "answers" in an appendix. That aside, the real difficulty for me was that our eager, holy and well-formed group of relatively new moms found some non-doctrinal point in almost every chapter that bothered or upset us: sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, sometimes in the raw content or sometimes just in the delivery. Perhaps we were collectively being overly-sensitive, but the problem arises, I think, when the author's *opinions* about motherhood are woven in tightly to a book with such a preponderance of quotations from the Catechism, Vatican II and papal encyclicals, etc. The opinions and the teachings do not, and should not hold the same weight, but you must be vigilant in this book to separate them. I found myself startled many times by what I read and then scanned back to find that I had missed the quotations marking the end of the excerpt from a church document.
Two standout examples:
- An extensive encouragement of breastfeeding (non-doctrinal) under a heading titled "Open to the Gift of Life" and immediately following a discussion of contraception (doctrinal)
- Unequivocal statement that finances are the only acceptable reason for a mother of young children to work outside the home: "If there is not a financial need for the mother to work outside the home, she should dedicate herself to the care of her children and withhold working outside the home until her children are at least six or seven years old..." (pg 95) Please, please, please, let's not confuse the truth (mothers have a unique and important role) with the opinion (there is only one way to live out the vocation).
In most other cases, the author's writing simply implied some things that rankled us, and my guess is it was probably unintentional. In our group discussions, we often found ourselves re-wording her text to convey what we guessed was the spirit of her message without the upsetting implications.
So in short, I think there are better options, if you are looking for a study group text on motherhood: Endow studies on Mulieris Dignitatem and JPII's Letter to women are the first ones that come to mind.
However...
The author's own writing is really only so-so, and her own thoughts are actually fairly few and far between, so extensive are the quotes. The discussion/reflection questions are, frankly, strange, because a large portion of them ask for factual regurgitation from the text, not interpretation/application, and also have the correct "answers" in an appendix. That aside, the real difficulty for me was that our eager, holy and well-formed group of relatively new moms found some non-doctrinal point in almost every chapter that bothered or upset us: sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, sometimes in the raw content or sometimes just in the delivery. Perhaps we were collectively being overly-sensitive, but the problem arises, I think, when the author's *opinions* about motherhood are woven in tightly to a book with such a preponderance of quotations from the Catechism, Vatican II and papal encyclicals, etc. The opinions and the teachings do not, and should not hold the same weight, but you must be vigilant in this book to separate them. I found myself startled many times by what I read and then scanned back to find that I had missed the quotations marking the end of the excerpt from a church document.
Two standout examples:
- An extensive encouragement of breastfeeding (non-doctrinal) under a heading titled "Open to the Gift of Life" and immediately following a discussion of contraception (doctrinal)
- Unequivocal statement that finances are the only acceptable reason for a mother of young children to work outside the home: "If there is not a financial need for the mother to work outside the home, she should dedicate herself to the care of her children and withhold working outside the home until her children are at least six or seven years old..." (pg 95) Please, please, please, let's not confuse the truth (mothers have a unique and important role) with the opinion (there is only one way to live out the vocation).
In most other cases, the author's writing simply implied some things that rankled us, and my guess is it was probably unintentional. In our group discussions, we often found ourselves re-wording her text to convey what we guessed was the spirit of her message without the upsetting implications.
So in short, I think there are better options, if you are looking for a study group text on motherhood: Endow studies on Mulieris Dignitatem and JPII's Letter to women are the first ones that come to mind.
May 7, 2019
I actually really did not enjoy this book- I love her other ones. It seemed disjointed and I would have used different rooms for different functions. And it was super judgy about breastfeeding.
January 12, 2023
Really enjoyed this and will definitely re read and reference it in the future
December 9, 2016
Good book. It's 100% orthodox and is a great encouragement for this Catholic mom. Good for a discussion group or individual reading (P.S. there's an answer key in the back of the book!).
I gave it 4/5 stars because the first half was a bit didactic and syrupy for my taste. For someone who is already sold on the Catholic view of sex and marriage, it was a tad heavy handed (though I suppose I could have just skipped that section). In other parts, the whole "have delightful, bonding family dinners of nutritious home cooked feasts" was just a bit too detached from my current cook/wrestle the baby/yell at the 3 year old/negotiate three bites of chicken for screen time routine.
That said, I'm so glad I persevered to the second half of the book. It was truly encouraging in a real life kind of way that highlighted God-given feminine gifts without being reduced to telling you to wear flowy skirts and smile more. She tackled suffering, prayer, towing the line between focusing on our duty to our family/reaching out to a broken world, and bringing Christ to every soul we meet through "mothering" and feminine genius.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!
I gave it 4/5 stars because the first half was a bit didactic and syrupy for my taste. For someone who is already sold on the Catholic view of sex and marriage, it was a tad heavy handed (though I suppose I could have just skipped that section). In other parts, the whole "have delightful, bonding family dinners of nutritious home cooked feasts" was just a bit too detached from my current cook/wrestle the baby/yell at the 3 year old/negotiate three bites of chicken for screen time routine.
That said, I'm so glad I persevered to the second half of the book. It was truly encouraging in a real life kind of way that highlighted God-given feminine gifts without being reduced to telling you to wear flowy skirts and smile more. She tackled suffering, prayer, towing the line between focusing on our duty to our family/reaching out to a broken world, and bringing Christ to every soul we meet through "mothering" and feminine genius.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!
June 26, 2016
I think I would have gotten much more out of this if it had been a group study instead of an independent read. But, as happens when reality intervenes, the group's members (myself included) got busy with, well, being mothers.
That said, the idea that there are Answers in the back--not suggestions for discussion topics, but supposedly Correct Answers--left me less than impressed. There's a big difference in my mind between a textbook and a guidebook. I don't need the former, but I'd really like the latter.
That said, the idea that there are Answers in the back--not suggestions for discussion topics, but supposedly Correct Answers--left me less than impressed. There's a big difference in my mind between a textbook and a guidebook. I don't need the former, but I'd really like the latter.
March 7, 2014
I thought this book would be more practical advice geared towards each room of the home and the tasks performed there. It isn't. It's more general spiritual advice and worldview for Catholic mothers. I'm glad I read it, though it was more of a refresher. I liked the quotes from Saints and from Popes throughout the book. I prefer Kimberly Hahn's books about the same subject because they include more practical advice.
November 2, 2015
Disappointing. Not what I expected from the title (the room by room organization really didn't make a lot of sense) and the writing itself is less than stellar. The book would have benefitted from more aggressive editing.
June 23, 2015
I love how she blends practical advice with thoughtful spirituality. Definitely worth the read!
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews