What does it mean to live Catholic faith more fully in our daily life? How can people better use their free time to enrich their relationships with God, with themselves, and with others? And how might attending to the ethical uses of free time strengthen Catholics’ habits of daily discernment so that their faith permeates their lives rather than being relegated to sexual ethics and the relatively rare hard cases addressed in ethics textbooks?

Kelly sheds insight into these and similar questions in this insightful and challenging book. He provides a thorough foundation for a theological ethics of free time, while at the same time exemplifying ethical discernment rooted in a truly Catholic theological anthropology. Kelly persuasively argues that a belief in the inherent relationality of human beings demands countercultural ways of thinking about, and living, daily life in the use of our free time—and in resistance to the tendency of work to leave us so little productive free time.

The argument of the book is well organized and carefully developed so that readers are provided with the intellectual tools to discern more deeply how best to make use of their own free time. Kelly begins by explaining his distinction between leisure, defined as free time activities done for their own sake, and recreation, which is here understood as the use of free time for the sake of something else. To be sure, this division between intrinsically and instrumentally valued activities is not—and cannot—be absolute. Nevertheless, as Kelly demonstrates, there is a significant distinction in principle between instrumentally valued recreational activities and the intrinsically valued leisure activities that Kelly contends ought to be prioritized because leisure provides a foretaste of the eschatological goal of eternal rest in God.

However strongly Kelly defends this priority of leisure over recreation, he acknowledges that recreational activities also have a place in the ethical use of free time. As finite creatures, we need recreation to recover from the exhaustion of work; recreation is thus an appropriate exercise of self-care as well as an opportunity to develop social bonds. Analyzing in some detail four common forms of recreation (television, digital media, spectator sports, and travel), Kelly concludes that each of these may be an appropriate and ethical use of one's recreational free time. A key problem, he notes, is that watching television and, increasingly, engaging with digital media, are the dominant—and even default—forms of free-time activity for many, leaving little time for leisure and increasing people's isolation rather than building community. Having shown that free time in the United States today is most often spent in ways that debilitate rather than enrich relationships with God, oneself, and others, Kelly creatively outlines practical paths toward less individualistic and more fulfilling recreational activities.

Although this focus on leisure and recreation might suggest a narrow concern for the lives of highly privileged people, in fact Kelly's theological perspective is thoroughly imbued with a commitment to solidarity and justice. Attention to the demands of everyday solidarity is central to Kelly's configuration of the proper discernment of the use of free time, both as leisure and as recreation. His detailed ethical analyses of how specific uses of free time affect others, including the least privileged, are well-reasoned and illuminating, and there is much practical wisdom in his assessments of how free time choices might decrease systemic injustice (including the injustice of denying to so many sufficient free time for leisure and recreation).

This book's invitation to a more faithful and fulfilling life is appropriate to, and deserves, a broad audience. The clear and crisp prose and well-structured argument make this book suitable for a general audience, and I would strongly recommend using some or most of the book with undergraduates or parish book study groups to initiate thought about the meaning of Christian faith for everyday life. The thorough research and nuanced perspectives make this book equally valuable for graduate students and scholars. The more people engage and build on the arguments of this book, the more likely we are to live more enriching lives and create more just and humane societies.