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The Catholic Church and Modern Sexual Knowledge, 1850-1950

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  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Lucia Pozzi

    1. Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Australia

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  • Offers an array of sources to provide critical insight into Catholic concern with the body and sexuality
  • Explores the ways in which the Catholic church has, and continues to, regulate sexual behaviours
  • Allows histories of sexuality and religion to speak to each other in new ways

Part of the book series: Genders and Sexualities in History (GSX)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Lucia Pozzi
    Pages 1-14

  3. Onanism: The Story of Onanism and the Story of Onan Are Not the Same

    • Lucia Pozzi
    Pages 15-52

  4. The Holy Office Deals with Masturbation, Abortion and Contraception

    • Lucia Pozzi
    Pages 53-88

  5. Sexual Purity

    • Lucia Pozzi
    Pages 89-120

  6. Jesuits Writing on Population Theories and Eugenics

    • Lucia Pozzi
    Pages 121-145

  7. Nudism: A Pernicious Doctrine

    • Lucia Pozzi
    Pages 147-173

  8. The Perfect Marriage

    • Lucia Pozzi
    Pages 175-192

  9. Responding to the ‘Plague of Birth Control’

    • Lucia Pozzi
    Pages 193-217

  10. A Papal Encyclical About Chaste Wedlock

    • Lucia Pozzi
    Pages 219-247

  11. Epilogue

    • Lucia Pozzi
    Pages 249-260

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 261-278
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Keywords

About this book

This book is the first to present a comprehensive historical picture of the modern Catholic concern with the body and sexuality. The Catholic church is commonly believed to have always opposed birth control and abortion throughout the centuries. Yet the Catholic encounter with modern sexuality has a more complex and interesting history. What was the meaning of sexual purity? Why did eugenics matter to Catholicism? How did the Society of Jesus interpret the idea of overpopulation? Why did Pius XI decide to issue the notorious encyclical Casti connubii on Christian marriage – the first modern papal pronouncement on birth control, abortion, and eugenics? In answering these questions, Lucia Pozzi uncovers new archival and unpublished records to dig into Catholic responses to modern sexual knowledge, showing the Catholic church at times resisting, but also often welcoming, scientific modernity.

Reviews

“As an intellectual history, The Catholic Church and Modern Sexual Knowledge, 1850–1950 connects in a nuanced and richly evidenced way the history of sexuality with the history of religion. This monograph illustrates the intellectual tug of war from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentiethcentury between the Catholic Church’s ideas of sexual morality and the developing medical ideas about physiology and sexuality. … Each chapter is written as a stand-alone chapter, with endnotes and a short bibliography.” (Carmen M. Mangion, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 32 (2), May, 2023) “This book offers an engaging and well-researched study of the relationship between Catholicism and sexual science; it will make a useful contribution to the histories of sexuality and religion, helping these two, often disparate, fields speak to each other in new ways.”

-  David Geiringer, Associate Lecturer and Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Queen Mary, University of London, UK   

"Too often historians of sexuality, especially in the English-speaking world, work with stylised views of the Catholic Church’s regulation of women’s sexuality. By reading Lucia Pozzi’s book, they can gain a more nuanced view based on fine-grained archival research."

- Peter Cryle, Emeritus Professor, University of Queensland

Authors and Affiliations

  • Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Australia

    Lucia Pozzi

About the author

Lucia Pozzi is an intellectual historian in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, Australia. She is the author of journal articles and book chapters on the history of modern Catholic discourses on sexuality and eugenics.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Catholic Church and Modern Sexual Knowledge, 1850-1950

  • Authors: Lucia Pozzi

  • Series Title: Genders and Sexualities in History

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79786-7

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-79785-0Published: 25 September 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-79788-1Published: 26 September 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-79786-7Published: 24 September 2021

  • Series ISSN: 2730-9479

  • Series E-ISSN: 2730-9487

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIII, 278

  • Topics: History of Modern Europe, Cultural History, Social History, History of Religion, Gender and Sexuality

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