As Americans rethought sex in the twentieth century, the Catholic Church's teachings on the divisive issue of contraception in marriage were in many ways central. In a fascinating history, Leslie Woodcock Tentler traces changing attitudes: from the late nineteenth century, when religious leaders of every variety were largely united in their opposition to contraception; to the 1920s, when distillations of Freud and the works of family planning reformers like Margaret Sanger began to reach a popular audience; to the Depression years, during which even conservative Protestant denominations quietly dropped prohibitions against marital birth control. Catholics and Contraception carefully examines the intimate dilemmas of pastoral counseling in matters of sexual conduct. Tentler makes it clear that uneasy negotiations were always necessary between clerical and lay authority. As the Catholic Church found itself isolated in its strictures against contraception—and the object of damaging rhetoric in the public debate over legal birth control—support of the Church's teachings on contraception became a mark of Catholic identity, for better and for worse. Tentler draws on evidence from pastoral literature, sermons, lay writings, private correspondence, and interviews with fifty-six priests ordained between 1938 and 1968, concluding, "the recent history of American Catholicism... can only be understood by taking birth control into account."

The Contraception Deception: Catholic Teaching on Birth Control by author Patrick Coffin is a comprehensive assessment of the Church’s sexual ethic. In this expanded revised edition of Sex Au Naturel: What It is and Why It’s Good for Your Marriage, Coffin demonstrates how the rejection of Humanae Vitae impacts more than just our national birthrates. With relevant insight into the development and reception of Paul VI’s landmark 1968 encyclical, Coffin explains why Humanae Vitae is more timely than ever. In The Contraception Deception, you’ll learn where exactly the Bible teaches against birth control, the differences between contraception and natural family planning (hint: they’re more profound than you think), why other reproductive technologies fall short of God’s vision for marriage and family, and—most importantly—how to rely on the ever-present grace of God rather than your own strength in faithfully following this challenging, life-giving aspect of Christian discipleship.

A revised and improved translation of Pope Paul VI's encyclical letter, Humanae vitae.

Originally published in 1965, Contraception received unanimous acclaim from all quarters as the first thorough, scholarly, objective analysis of Catholic doctrine on birth control. More than ever this subject is of acute concern to a world facing serious population problems, and the author has written an important new appendix examining the development of and debates over the doctrine in the past twenty years.

Respectfully Catholic and Scientific traces the unexpected manner in which several influential liberal-progressive Catholics tried to shape how evolution and birth control were framed and debated in the public square in the era between the World Wars-- and the unintended consequences of their efforts. A small but influential cadre of Catholic priests professionally trained in social sciences, Frs. John Montgomery Cooper, John A. Ryan, and John A. O’Brien, gained a hearing from mainline public intellectuals largely by engaging in dialogue on these topics using the lingua franca of the age, science, to the near exclusion of religious argumentation. The Catholics’ approach was more than just tactical. It also derived from the subtle influence of Catholic theological Modernism, with its strong enthusiasm for science, and from an inclination toward scientism inherited from the Progressive Era’s social science milieu. All three shared a fervent desire to translate the Catholic ethos, as they understood it, into the vocabulary of the modern age while circumventing anti-Catholic attitudes in the process. However, their method resulted in a series of unintended consequences whereby their arguments were not infrequently co-opted and used against both them and the institutional church they served. Alexander Pavuk considers the complex role of both liberal religious figures and scientific elites in evolution and birth control discourse, and how each contributed in unexpected ways to the reconstruction of those topics in public culture. The reconstruction saw the topics themselves shift from matters considered largely within moral frameworks into bodies of kno

This book uses original oral history material and secretive Vatican papers to explore the sexual and religious experiences of Catholic women in post-war England. It offers a fresh perspective on the idea that 'sex killed God', reframing dominant approaches to the histories of sex, religion and social change.

Guide for the general reader to natural methods of birth control acceptable to Catholic doctrine.