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Catholics and Contraception: An American History by Leslie Woodcock Tentler Cornell Univ. Press, 2004 335 pp., $29.95 |
In 1968, Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae, a long-awaited encyclical that followed the Second Vatican Council. The Council, which met in four sessions between 1962 and 1965, made remarkable changes in the church, mostly toward openness. Vernacular languages and increased lay participation were approved for masses, the Vatican acknowledged fellow believers in other Christian traditions, and the Council itself allowed some laypersons to observe its proceedings. In 1966, an advisory commission even recommended that the pope allow Catholics to use contraception.
Both the secular and religious climates seemed favorable for change, but Humanae Vitae disappointed most American Catholics by rigidifying the church's stance against birth control. After a discussion of natural law and the meaning of marriage, the pope wrote,
God has wisely ordered laws of nature and the incidence of fertility in such a way that successive births are already naturally spaced through the inherent operation of these laws. The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.1
In Catholics and Contraception: An American History, Leslie Woodcock Tentler treats American Catholic culture across the 20th century. From Humanae Vitae, Tentler reaches back to the early 20th century and forward to the 1970s, describing ways in which Catholic lay people and clergy understood the meaning and practice of birth control. Tentler uses the generation that came to adulthood in the late 1960s as a focal point, arguing, "It was precisely in the context of birth control, an issue that intimately affected nearly all adult Catholics, that a remarkable generation—better educated and perhaps more devout than any before it—came to a sense of moral autonomy." In addition to providing well-researched detail about contraception, the book's most valuable contribution is a description of the shift from corporate moral decision-making to individual moral autonomy.
These are worthy purposes, but Tentler claims even more. The book claims to treat the American experience of rethinking sex in the 20th century, though it is almost entirely restricted to Catholicism, understood within national political and social contexts. In addition, Tentler seems at times to be too close to her subject. While she relies mostly on archives, she also interviewed 56 priests, whom she describes as, "to a man, gracious and intelligent; nearly all were widely read; most were psychologically astute. They had splendid senses of humor, too, usually of the dry variety." Such judgments bespeak a generous spirit; they also suggest a certain coziness that can be distracting. But these are small nuisances in a solid scholarly study rich in implications for all Christians and not for Catholics alone.
Traditional Catholic teaching had treated sexuality mostly as evidence of fallenness. Sex was necessary for procreation, but the sexual impulse should not be indulged. Some priests encouraged abstinence during Advent, Lent, and church feasts, implying a levitical sort of uncleanness associated with intercourse. Though most Christians before the 20th century, Catholic and Protestant alike, allowed early abortion (understood then as "menstrual induction") as well as contraception, such practices occurred under official silence and with little doctrinal elaboration. Without scientific information about conception, pregnancy, especially in its early stages, was a realm of knowledge left to women. Women shared knowledge about how to "induce a late menstruation" with herbs or other substances, or prevent conception with spermicidal substances or periodic abstinence. Even after mid-century scientific discoveries about conception, women took advantage of pastoral reticence to continue health practices they deemed to be in their best interest.
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