Susan A. Ross is Associate Professor of Theology and former director of women's studies at Loyola University in Chicago. She presents a feminist sacramental theology in which God's extravagant affections for humankind are given pre-eminence. She notes that the Roman Catholic hierarchy's refusal to allow women to preside at the Eucharist and to act as sacramental ministers has inserted a message of exclusion into the church's most vivid communal act of unity.

Ross sees the three essentials of Christian sacramentality as "its rootedness in the revelatory character of creation, its communal dimension, and its connection to the life of Jesus the Christ." She boldly presents a feminist interpretation of family as an embodied context for the sacraments. Taking Jesus' extended notion of family, Ross shows how this context can expand and deepen the grace-filled opportunities for believers.

In the last chapter, the author reports on the experiences of women who work in pastoral ministry in so-called priestless parishes. Their work of caring and creativity offers Catholicism fresh hope for a future beyond a male-dominated sacramental system.