Abstract
This chapter focuses on the concept of physiology in order to review the history that this book has traced. Physiology has been a keyword in Catholic discourses on sexuality since the nineteenth century. Pioneers and advocates of the necessity for religious people to learn biology, such as Pierre Jean Corneille Debreyne, aimed to teach priests about new achievements in physiology. But, as we saw in Chap. 2, physiology played a greater role when it became the basis for calendar methods of birth regulation. However, the Catholic approval of calendar-based methods was not straightforward, as the archival records of the Holy Office reveal. Casti connubii is commonly believed to be its first acknowledgement of such methods, but the ‘safe period’ was officially approved only in 1951, when Pius XII delivered a speech to the Union of Italian Midwives. Finally, physiology served as an argument against the use of the contraceptive pill.
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Notes
- 1.
Debreyne , Précis de physiologie catholique, V and ff.
- 2.
Il rogo. Rassegna mensile di moralità. Anno III Roma, 20 luglio (1913): 4.
- 3.
Van de Velde, Ideal Marriage, 282.
- 4.
Noonan , Contraception, 522.
- 5.
Langlois , Le crime d’Onan , 332.
- 6.
Langlois , Le crime d’Onan , 334.
- 7.
Noonan , Contraception, 527.
- 8.
Raoul Guchteneere, Judgement on Birth Control (New York: Macmillan, 1931); see, Martine Sevegrand ‘La Méthode Ogino et La Morale Catholique: Une Controverse Théologique Autour de La Limitation Des Naissances (1930–1951)’. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France 78, no. 200 (1992): 77–99, 85; see also Noonan, Contraception, 553.
- 9.
Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Catholics and Contraception: An American History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 106.
- 10.
Tentler , Catholics and Contraception, 106.
- 11.
On O’Brien see Tentler, Catholics and Contraception, 106.
- 12.
Noonan , Contraception, 528.
- 13.
Archivio per la Congregazione della dottrina della fede, Rerum Variarum 1936, 2 (407/1934).
- 14.
ACDF, Rerum Variarum 1936, 2 (407/1934), 19.
- 15.
ACDF, Rerum Variarum 1936, 2 (407/1934), letter from nuncio in the United States, Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, to the secretary of the Holy Office, 24 February 1935.
- 16.
ACDF, Rerum variarum, 1936, 2 (407/1934), Feria II 16 March 1936?
- 17.
ACDF, Rerum Variarum 1936, 2 (407/1934), 34, the translation into English is mine.
- 18.
Susanne Krejsa MacManus and Christian Fiala. Der Detektiv Der Fruchtbaren Tage: Die Geschichte Des Gynäkologen Hermann Knaus (1892–1970) (Wien: Verlagshaus der Ärzte, 2017).
- 19.
Franz Hürth, De sterilitate physiologica. Nouvelle Revue théologique, September-October (1931): 671–689.
- 20.
Neque onanismus coniugalis propter solum factum effectus novae vitae non obtenti (vel obtentu impossibilis) est intrinsece illicitus, sed propter modum quo hic effectus redditus est impossibilis, scilicet propter substantiam ipsius actus coniugalis corruptam”, Hürth, De sterilitate physiologica, 686.
- 21.
Hürth , De sterilitate physiologica, 688.
- 22.
Hürth , De sterilitate physiologica, 688.
- 23.
APUG, fondo Hürth, Allocutiones ad R. Rotam et alia, 2668.
- 24.
At nulla profecto ratio, ne gravissima quidem, efficere potest, ut quod intrinsece est contra naturam, id cum natura congruens et honestum fiat. Cum autem actus coniugii suapte natura proli generandae sit destinatus, qui, in eo exercendo, naturali hac eum vi atque virtute de industria destituunt, contra naturam agunt et turpe quid atque intrinsece inhonestum operantur. Casti connubii , Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 22, (Vatican City, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1930), 559.
- 25.
Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43, (Vatican City, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1951), 850.
- 26.
Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43, (Vatican City, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1951), 842.
- 27.
Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43, (Vatican City, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1951), 842.
- 28.
Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43, (Vatican City, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1951), 844.
- 29.
Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43, (Vatican City, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1951), 844.
- 30.
Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43, (Vatican City, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1951), 844.
- 31.
Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43, (Vatican City, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1951), 848.
- 32.
Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43, (Vatican City, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1951), 848.
- 33.
Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43, (Vatican City, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1951), 852.
- 34.
Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43, (Vatican City, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1951), 852.
- 35.
Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43, (Vatican City, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1951), 853.
- 36.
See for example, Alana Harris ed., The Schism of ’68. Catholicism, Contraception and Humanae vitae in Europe. 1945–1975 (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2018).
- 37.
Macmanus-Fiala , Der Detective der fruchtbaren Tage, 227.
- 38.
Macmanus-Fiala , Der Detective der fruchtbaren Tage, 227.
- 39.
David Geiringer, ‘Catholic Understandings of Female Sexuality in 1960s Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, (2/ 2017): 209–238, 219 and ff.
- 40.
Kari Elisabeth Børresen, “Religion Confronting Women’s Human Rights: The Case of Roman Catholicism.” In Facilitating Freedom of Religion or Belief: A Deskbook, edited by Tore Lindholm, W. Cole Durham, Bahia G. Tahzib-Lie, Elizabeth A. Sewell, and Lena Larsen, (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands 2004) 545–559, 550.
- 41.
For an analysis of Humanae vitae ’s impact on Catholic disaffiliation see Stephen Bullivant, Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2019), in particular chapter five, Gaudium et spes, luctus et angor.
- 42.
Emily Reimer-Barry, ‘On Women’s Health and Women’s Power: A Feminist Appraisal of Humanae Vitae’, Theological Studies 79 (4) 2018: 818–840, 822.
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Pozzi, L. (2021). Epilogue. In: The Catholic Church and Modern Sexual Knowledge, 1850-1950. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79786-7_10
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