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.
Sex Au Naturel: What It Is and Why It's Good For Your Marriage by radio host Patrick Coffin is a bracing ride across the landscape of the Catholic sexual ethic. If you're looking for intellectual ammo with which to defend and explain the teaching of Humanae Vitae, or if you reject it altogether, you'll agree that Coffin approaches the topic from a wide array of new and persuasive angles. With humor and enthusiasmand a total absence of moralizingyou'll learn: Why Paul VI's landmark 1968 encyclical was widely rejected a generation ago and why it's gaining new respectability now Where exactly the Bible teaches against birth control The differences between contraception and natural family planning (hint: they're more profound than you think) The meaning of the natural law and how it applies to birth control How the dogma of the Blessed Trinity implicit condemns birth control That every single Protestant denomination rejected birth control until 1930 Why the myth of overpopulation is used against the Church, and how to answer it How faithful adherence to the teaching of Humanae Vitae is causally related to marital happiness and longevity Why it's not too late to start over, even if you've been sterilized 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 Much, much more!
Birth Control: A Reference Handbook provides a breadth and depth of discussion about birth control throughout human history and in the modern day, with attention paid to the controversies related to it. Birth Control: A Reference Handbook covers the topic of birth control from the earliest pages of human history to the present day. The book is divided into two parts. The first two chapters provide a historical background to the topic and a review of current issues and problems. The remainder of the book consists of chapters that aid the reader in continuing her or his own research on the topic, such as an extended annotated bibliography, chronology, glossary, noteworthy individuals and organizations in the field, and important data and documents. This book differs from other works on its subject primarily because of the variety of resources provided, such as further reading, perspective essays on the topic, a historical timeline, and useful terms in the field. It is intended for readers of high school through the community college level, along with adult readers who may be interested in the topic.
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."
This book is the first to synthesize the intertwined histories of contraception, sterilization, and abortion in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. Caron skillfully blends the local study of reproductive history in the state of Rhode Island into her thorough re-telling of the larger story that played out on the national stage
Secular and religious thinkers agree: the sexual revolution is one of the most important milestones in human history. Perhaps nothing has changed life for so many, so fast, as the severing of sex and procreation. But what has been the result? This ground-breaking book by noted essayist and author Mary Eberstadt contends that sexual freedom has paradoxically produced widespread discontent. Drawing on sociologists Pitirim Sorokin, Carle Zimmerman, and others; philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe and novelist Tom Wolfe; and a host of feminists, food writers, musicians, and other voices from across today's popular culture, Eberstadt makes her contrarian case with an impressive array of evidence. Her chapters range across academic disciplines and include supporting evidence from contemporary literature and music, women's studies, college memoirs, dietary guides, advertisements, television shows, and films. Adam and Eve after the Pill examines as no book has before the seismic social changes caused by the sexual revolution. In examining human behavior in the post-liberation world, Eberstadt provocatively asks: Is food the new sex? Is pornography the new tobacco? Adam and Eve after the Pill will change the way readers view the paradoxical impact of the sexual revolution on ideas, morals, and humanity itself.
Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What The Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017. "The truth, we are told, will make us free. It is time to free Catholics, lay as well as clerical, from the structures of deceit that are our subtle modern form of papal sin. Paler, subtler, less dramatic than the sins castigated by Orcagna or Dante, these are the quiet sins of intellectual betrayal." --from the Introduction From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills comes an assured, acutely insightful--and occasionally stinging--critique of the Catholic Church and its hierarchy from the nineteenth century to the present. Papal Sin in the past was blatant, as Catholics themselves realized when they painted popes roasting in hell on their own church walls. Surely, the great abuses of the past--the nepotism, murders, and wars of conquest--no longer prevail; yet, the sin of the modern papacy, as revealed by Garry Wills in his penetrating new book, is every bit as real, though less obvious than the old sins. Wills describes a papacy that seems steadfastly unwilling to face the truth about itself, its past, and its relations with others. The refusal of the authorities of the Church to be honest about its teachings has needlessly exacerbated original mistakes. Even when the Vatican has tried to tell the truth--e.g., about Catholics and the Holocaust--it has ended up resorting to historical distortions and evasions. The same is true when the papacy has attempted to deal with its record of discrimination against women, or with its unbelievable assertion that "natural law" dictates its sexual code. Though the blithe disregard of some Catholics for papal directives has occasionally been attributed to mere hedonism or willfulness, it actually reflects a failure, after long trying on their part, to find a credible level of honesty in the official positions adopted by modern popes. On many issues outside the realm of revealed doctrine, the papacy has made itself unbelievable even to the well-disposed laity. The resulting distrust is in fact a neglected reason for the shortage of priests. Entirely aside from the public uproar over celibacy, potential clergy have proven unwilling to put themselves in a position that supports dishonest teachings. Wills traces the rise of the papacy's stubborn resistance to the truth, beginning with the challenges posed in the nineteenth century by science, democracy, scriptural scholarship, and rigorous history. The legacy of that resistance, despite the brief flare of John XXIII's papacy and some good initiatives in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council (later baffled), is still strong in the Vatican. Finally Wills reminds the reader of the positive potential of the Church by turning to some great truth tellers of the Catholic tradition--St. Augustine, John Henry Newman, John Acton, and John XXIII. In them, Wills shows that the righteous path can still be taken, if only the Vatican will muster the courage to speak even embarrassing truths in the name of Truth itself.
The biography of a multifaceted technological object, the IUD, illuminates how political contexts shaped contraceptive development, marketing, use, and users. The intrauterine device (IUD) is used by 150 million women around the world. It is the second most prevalent method of female fertility control in the global South and the third most prevalent in the global North. Over its five decades of use, the IUD has been viewed both as a means for women's reproductive autonomy and as coercive tool of state-imposed population control, as a convenient form of birth control on a par with the pill and as a threat to women's health. In this book, Chikako Takeshita investigates the development, marketing, and use of the IUD since the 1960s. She offers a biography of a multifaceted technological object through a feminist science studies lens, tracing the transformations of the scientific discourse around it over time and across different geographies. Takeshita describes how developers of the IUD adapted to different social interests in their research and how changing assumptions about race, class, and female sexuality often guided scientific inquiries. The IUD, she argues, became a “politically versatile technology,” adaptable to both feminist and nonfeminist reproductive politics because of researchers' attempts to maintain the device's suitability for women in both the developing and the developed world. Takeshita traces the evolution of scientists' concerns—from contraceptive efficacy and product safety to the politics of abortion—and describes the most recent, hormone-releasing, menstruation-suppressing iteration of the IUD. Examining fifty years of IUD development and use, Takeshita finds a microcosm of the global political economy of women's bodies, health, and sexuality in the history of this contraceptive device.
