The delicate art of respectful protest. A Catholic ethics of contraception in French-speaking Belgium (1950-1975)
Type de matériel :
9
Based on the study of two organizations involved in pastoral care for families (the National Centre for Family Pastoral Care and the magazine Feuilles Familiales) and a specialised women’s Catholic Action organization (the Christian Women‘s Worker Leagues), this article examines how in the 1960’s a new Catholic conjugal morality, based on the spouses’“intention” and open to birth control, emerged and spread in French-speaking Belgium. It shows how this pastoral proposal, which led to a secularization of the intimate, encouraged attitudes that circumvented the encyclical ) and a specialised women’s Catholic Action organization (the Christian Women’s Worker Leagues), this article examines how in the 1960’s a new Catholic conjugal morality, based on the spouses’“intention” and open to birth control, emerged and spread in French-speaking Belgium. It shows how this pastoral proposal, which led to a secularization of the intimate, encouraged attitudes that circumvented the encyclical Humanæ Vitæ (1968), but also how it made it possible to limit certain religious defections by claiming a Catholicity that was distanced from clerical moral prescriptions in matters of sexuality. From the beginning of the 1970s, this Catholic counter-norm became the basis of a family-centered ethic of contraception disseminated by Catholic organizations on a national scale with state support, in a context of mobilization against abortion.(1968), but also how it made it possible to limit certain religious defections by claiming a Catholicity that was distanced from clerical moral prescriptions in matters of sexuality. From the beginning of the 1970s, this Catholic counter-norm became the basis of a family-centered ethic of contraception disseminated by Catholic organizations on a national scale with state support, in a context of mobilization against abortion.
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