This volume explores the critical reactions and dissenting activism generated in the summer of 1968 when Pope Paul VI promulgated his much-anticipated and hugely divisive encyclical,
Humanae Vitae, which banned the use of ‘artificial contraception’ by Catholics. Through comparative case studies of fourteen different European countries, it offers a wealth of new data about the lived religious beliefs and practices of ordinary people – as well as theologians interrogating ‘traditional teachings’ – in areas relating to love, marriage, family life, gender roles and marital intimacy. Key themes include the role of medical experts, the media, the strategies of progressive Catholic clergy and laity, and the critical part played by hugely differing Church-State relations. In demonstrating the Catholic Church’s important (and overlooked) contribution to the refashioning of the sexual landscape of post-war Europe, it makes a critical intervention into a growing historiography exploring the 1960s and offers a close interrogation of one strand of religious change in this tumultuous decade.
Table of Content
1. Introduction: The Summer of ’68 – Beyond the Secularization Thesis; Alana Harris.- Part I: To the Barricades.- 2.
Humanae Vitae, Catholic Attitudes to Birth Control in the Netherlands and Transnational Church Politics, 1930-75; Chris Dols and Maarten van den Bos.- 3. Of Human Love. Catholics Campaigning for Sexual Aggiornamento in postwar Belgium; Wannes Dupont.- 4. ‘A Galileo-crisis not a Luther crisis’? English Catholics’ attitudes to Contraception; Alana Harris.- Part II: Episcopal Controversies.- 5. Religion and Contraception in Comparative Perspective – Switzerland (1950-70); Caroline Rusterholz.- 6. Attempted Disobedience.
Humanae Vitae in West Germany and Austria; Katharina Ebner and Maria Mesner.- Part III: Christian Science and Catholic Conservatism.- 7.The Politics of Catholic Medicine. ‘The pill’ and
Humanae Vitae in Portugal; Tiago Pires Marques.- 8.
Humanae Vitae, Birth Control and the Forgotten History of the Catholic church in Poland Agnieszka Kościańska.- Part IV: Covering the Controversy.- 9. A Kind of Reformation in Miniature. The Paradoxical Impact of
Humanae Vitae in Italy; Massimo Faggioli and Francesca Vassalle.- 10. Love in the Time of el Generalísimo: Debates about the pill in Spain before and after
Humanae Vitae; Agata Ignaciuk.- 11. Reactions to the Papal encyclical Humanae Vitae: the French Conundrum; Martine Sevegrand.- Part V: Church, State and Contraception.- 12. The Best News Ireland ever got?
Humanae Vitae’s Reception on the Pope’s Green Island; Peter Murray.- 13. Catholicism behind the Iron Curtain: Czechoslovak and Hungarian Responses to
Humanae Vitae; Mary Heimann and Gábor Szegedi.- 14. Looking for Love – an Afterword; Dagmar Herzog.- Index
About the author
Alana Harris is Lecturer in Modern British History at King’s College London, UK. She has previously published
Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism, 1945-1982 (2013) and
Love and Romance in Britain, 1918-1970 (with Timothy W. Jones, Palgrave, 2014).
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