The Schism of ’68

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxi

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2. Introduction: The Summer of ’68—Beyond the Secularization Thesis

   • Alana Harris

   Pages 1-20

3. To the Barricades

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 21-21

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   2. Humanae Vitae: Catholic Attitudes to Birth Control in the Netherlands and Transnational Church Politics, 1945–1975

      • Chris Dols, Maarten van den Bos

      Pages 23-47

   3. Of Human Love: Catholics Campaigning for Sexual Aggiornamento in Postwar Belgium

      • Wannes Dupont

      Pages 49-71

   4. ‘A Galileo-Crisis Not a Luther Crisis’? English Catholics’ Attitudes to Contraception

      • Alana Harris

      Pages 73-96

4. Episcopal Controversies

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 97-97

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   2. Religion and Contraception in Comparative Perspective—Switzerland, 1950–1970

      • Caroline Rusterholz

      Pages 99-119

   3. Attempted Disobedience: Humanae Vitae in West Germany and Austria

      • Katharina Ebner, Maria Mesner

      Pages 121-158

5. Christian Science and Catholic Conservatism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 159-159

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   2. The Politics of Catholic Medicine: ‘The Pill’ and Humanae Vitae in Portugal

      • Tiago Pires Marques

      Pages 161-186

   3. Humanae Vitae, Birth Control and the Forgotten History of the Catholic Church in Poland

      • Agnieszka Kościańska

      Pages 187-208

6. Covering the Controversy

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 209-209

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   2. A Kind of Reformation in Miniature: The Paradoxical Impact of Humanae Vitae in Italy

      • Francesca Vassalle, Massimo Faggioli

      Pages 211-228

   3. Love in the Time of El Generalísimo: Debates About the Pill in Spain Before and After Humanae Vitae

      • Agata Ignaciuk

      Pages 229-250

   4. Reactions to the Papal Encyclical Humanae Vitae: The French Conundrum

      • Martine Sevegrand

      Pages 251-271

7. Church, State and Contraception

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 273-273

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   2. The Best News Ireland Ever Got? Humanae Vitae’s Reception on the Pope’s Green Island

      • Peter Murray

      Pages 275-301

   3. Catholicism Behind the Iron Curtain: Czechoslovak and Hungarian Responses to Humanae Vitae

      • Mary Heimann, Gábor Szegedi

      Pages 303-348

   4. Afterword—Looking for Love

      • Dagmar Herzog

      Pages 349-363

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.

• Pope Paul VI
• birth control
• clergy
• sexual ethics
• Second Vatican Council
• gender and sexuality

“The book offers some important lessons and frameworks for a project which could work on a global scale. … this book broadens our understanding of how ‘liberal’ ideas intersected with religious beliefs at a moment of profound agitation.” (David Geiringer, British Catholic History, Vol. 34 (3), May, 2019)

“A genuinely groundbreaking collection, where international and interdisciplinary new scholarship explores the relationship between Roman Catholicism and global developments in sexuality and women's reproductive rights in the `radical 1960s'. … The Schism of'68: Catholics, Contraception and `Humanae Vitae' in Europe, 1945-1975 presents a multifaceted and meticulously researched scholarly collection, and isa sophisticated contribution to our understanding of the past.” (Scriptable, rtreview.org, Issue 21, June, 2018)

• King’s College London, London, United Kingdom

  Alana Harris

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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