The mystery of human life in three scenes

Abstract

Urszula Dudziak. Misterium ludzkiego życia: od poczęcia do umierania. Studium dla duszpasterzy i doradców życia rodzinnego. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 2021, ss. 197.

The reviewed monograph by Urszula Dudziak, a theologian and psychologist from Lublin, is an interdisciplinary familiological and pastoral case study exploring three research areas of paramount importance for the pastoral care of families namely “gender and sexuality”, “fertility and procreation”, and “ageing and dying” of the human being. The aim of the literature research undertaken in the dissertation was to develop an integral anthropological synthesis of human biologism considered in close relation to other personal spheres. The author competently used the monographic method, utilising the methodology of theoretical-cognitive research and drawing extensively on the results of the auxiliary sciences of pastoral theology. The study as a whole is a remarkable example of pastoral personology which translates the assumptions of Christian personalist anthropology into the language of the pastoral practice of the Catholic Church aimed at the integral development of the human person at three particular stages of his or her life namely conception and birth, actualisation of procreative abilities as well aspassing on the gift of life, ageing and dying.