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“The Abominable Crime of Onan”: Catholic Pastoral Practice and Family Limitation in the United States, 1875–1919

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Leslie Woodcock Tentler
Leslie Woodcock Tentler
Affiliation:
professor of history at the Catholic University of America.
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Extract

By the 1930s few Catholics in the United States could have been unaware of their church's absolute prohibition on contraception. A widely-publicized papal encyclical had spoken to the issue in 1930, even as various Protestant churches were for the first time giving a public blessing to the practice of birth control in marriage. Growing numbers of American Catholics had been exposed since at least 1920 to frank and vigorous preaching on the subject in the context of parish missions. (Missions are probably best understood as the Catholic analogue of a revival.) And by the early 1930s Catholic periodicals and pamphlets addressed the question of birth control more frequently and directly than ever before. As a Chicago Jesuit acknowledged in 1933, “Practically every priest who is close to the people admits that contraception is the hardest problem of the confessional today.” A major depression accounted in part for the hardness of the problem. But it was more fundamentally caused by the laity's heightened awareness of their church's stance on birth control and their growing consciousness of this position as a defining attribute of Catholic identity.

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , June 2002 , pp. 307 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2002

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References

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33. This is a concern of long standing for nearly all manualists. As a typical example, see Schieler, Caspar E., Theory and Practice of the Confessional: A Guide in the Administration of the Sacrament of Penance, 2d ed., trans, and ed. Rev. Heuser, H. J. (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1906), 384, 609.Google Scholar

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38. Author interview with Fr. Ferdinand De Cneudt, 19 Oct. 1998, Roseville, Mich. De Cneudt was born in Belgium; his family emigrated to Detroit in 1920.

39. This did not keep contemporary anti-Catholic propagandists from asserting that priests routinely and in salacious detail questioned female penitents about sexual sin. For a particularly vivid example by a former Catholic priest see, Rev. Charles, Chiniquy, The Priest, the Woman, and the Confessional (Chicago: A. Craig & Co., 1880).Google Scholar

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41. The American translator of Caspar Schieler's Theory and Practice of the Confessional (1906) apologized for rendering in English passages on certain “most delicate subjects”—the volume, after all, might fall into non-clerical hands. He intimated that many priests' Latin was insufficient for post-seminary refreshment in moral theology. See 5.

42. Rt. Rev. Aloysius, Roeggl, The Confessional: or, Admonitions for the Confessional and Penance, according to the gospels for the Sunday and Holydays of the Ecclesiastical Year, trans. and enl. Rev. Augustine, Wirth, O.S.B. (Baltimore: John Murphy & Company, 1877), 385–87.Google Scholar

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44. Ibid., 599, n. 553. The latter portion of the sentence is translated from the Latin. See also Rev. Frederick, Schulze, Manual of Pastoral Theology: A Practical Guide for Ecclesiastical Students and Newly Ordained Priests (Milwaukee: Diederich-Schaefer, 1906), 151.Google Scholar

45. Joseph, McSorley, C.S.P., Italian Confessions and How to Hear Them: An Easy Method for Busy Priests (New York: Paulist, 1916)Google Scholar. The Society of Missionary Priests of St. Paul was founded in 1858 by the American priest-convert Isaac Hecker. The order specialized in the preaching of missions from its inception; by the late nineteenth century it had embarked on mission preaching to non-Catholics as an innovative means of reducing ignorance of and hostility to Catholicism in the United States.

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49. Ibid., 102–3.

50. The Key of Heaven; or, The Devout Christian's Daily Companion (New York: Christian Press Association, n.d.), 584, 601–4, 613Google Scholar. The imprimatur is that of Cardinal John McCloskey, who received his red hat in 1875 and died in 1885.

51. Rev. Konings, A., C.SS.R., General Confession Made Easy (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1879)Google Scholar asks directly about abortion but only obliquely about birth control. Helpful on this subject is O'Connor, Joseph Xavier, O.S.A., “A Survey of the Examination of Conscience as Found in Some Popular Prayerbooks” (M.A. thesis, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The Catholic University of America, 1954).Google Scholar

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55. Ibid., 387, 612–13, 616–18.

56. The letter's full text appears in the Michigan Catholic, 27 Feb. 1890, 1:4–5.Google Scholar

57. The interview was reprinted in the Michigan Catholic, 6 Feb. 1908, 1:6–7.Google Scholar

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63. McClory, John A., S.J., The Brazen Serpent, 2d ed. (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1922), 12Google Scholar. The book is a compilation of Lenten sermons preached by Father McClory at SS. Peter and Paul's church in Detroit in 1919.

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66. See, for example, the advice dispensed in Schulze, , Manual of Pastoral Theology, 323Google Scholar and Stang, , Pastoral Theology, 36.Google Scholar

67. The Archdiocese of Chicago instituted the first diocesan sermon outlines in 1918, which also required that priests give doctrinal instructions at all low Masses. Other dioceses, principally in the Midwest, eventually followed suit, though not until the 1930s or even the 1940s. Detroit's Bishop John Foley (1888–1918) prescribed an annual Sunday sermon on marriage, mainly—it seems—for purposes of inveighing against marriage to non-Catholics. But he seemed unsure of how many priests actually complied. A question in this regard appears on the form which Detroit's priests submitted annually on the state of their parishes. Copies are found in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Detroit in any of the parish files from 1889 to 1918.

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73. The Homiletic Monthly and Catechist—subsequently the Homiletic and Pastoral Review— began publication in 1900. The 1924 reference to “birth control” occurs in an article on mixed marriage.

74. Cooper, John M., MS notes for a sermon on “Race-Suicide,” 4 Feb. 1916. Archives of the Catholic University of America, John Montgomery Cooper papers, box 1, folder 1916–17. “Not preached” is in Cooper's hand.Google Scholar

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78. This assertion is based on my research in the Paulist Fathers' archives at St. Paul's College, Washington, D.C.

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81. This assertion is based on my reading of the sermon manuscripts housed at the Archives of the Redemptorist Fathers of the Baltimore Province, located in Brooklyn.

82. Wissel, , The Redemptorist on the American Missions, 1:73–4.Google Scholar

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84. Ibid., 474.

85. Ibid., 76.

86. Ibid., 473.

87. Ibid., 474–75.

88. Michael, Burke, C.SS.R., “For Married Men,” undated. (Burke was ordained in 1860 and died in 1891.)Google Scholar Archives of the Redemptorist Fathers, Baltimore Province, uncatalogued. For a slightly later but comparably explicit Redemptorist instruction, see Schneider, John G., C.SS.R., “Duties of Married Men” and “Duties of Married Women” in volume of MS sermons titled “State Instructions (Mission),” undated. Schneider was ordained in 1888 and died in 1914. Archives of the Redemptorist Fathers, Baltimore Province, uncatalogued.Google Scholar

89. Brick, W. M., C.SS.R., MS sermon on “The General Judgment,” 27 Jul. 1887Google Scholar. Archives of the Redemptorist Fathers, Baltimore Province, uncatalogued. This sermon and others are found in a bound volume which bears the above date on its first page. Fr. Brick presumably preached these sermons many times over.

90. Dwyer, MS sermon on “The General Judgment.”

91. Gillis, James M., C.S.P., MS sermon on “Judgment,” preached at several locations in 1903–1904Google Scholar. Archives of the Paulist Fathers, PPGILLMOO8.

92. Typescript sermon on “Death,” no author given, undated but probably mid-to-late teens. Archives of the Redemptorist Fathers, Baltimore Province, uncatalogued.

93. Lummer, , “Marriage—Its End.”Google Scholar

94. Wissel, , The Redemptorist on the American Missions, 1:95–96.Google Scholar

95. “Race Suiciders,” 29.

96. The quote is from Rev. Reynold, Kuehnel, “Conferences for the Holy Name Society,” Homiletic Monthly and Catechist 16:11 (08 1916): 1055.Google Scholar

97. McClory, , Brazen Serpent, 12.Google Scholar

98. Kuehnel, , “Conferences for the Holy Name Society,” 1055–58.Google Scholar

99. Noonan, , Contraception, 91–94, 98–101, 144, 146, 155, 178, 215–16, 232–37, 360–65.Google Scholar

100. Ibid., 364–65.

101. Schulze, , Manual of Pastoral Theology, 280Google Scholar. Rev. J. T. Durward, A Short Course in Catholic Doctrine for Non-Catholics Intending Marriage with Catholics (n.p., 1909) warns against sinful “prevention” on 3. Durward was a priest of the Diocese of LaCross (Wis.); he described his book as a help to priests under increased episcopal pressure to instruct the non-Catholic marriage partner.

102. Donohoe, “Marriage Instructions.”

103. Kirsch, Felix M., O.M. Cap., Sex Education and Training in Chastity (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1930), 442Google Scholar. Kirsch is quoting from one of the respondents to a questionnaire sent to some five hundred priests engaged in pastoral work.

104. Ryan, , “Family Limitation,” 690.Google Scholar

105. As examples, see Blakely, Paul L., S.J., “Conscious Birth Restriction,” Catholic Mind (22 06 1915)Google Scholar, repr. in Masse, Benjamin L., ed., The Catholic Mind Through Fifty Years (New York: America, 1952)Google Scholar; Dowling, M. P., S.J., “Race Suicide,” The Catholic Mind 14 (22 10 1916): 519–39Google Scholar; Stritch, , “What Menaces the Family.”Google Scholar

106. Ryan, , “The Small Family and National Decadence,” 142.Google Scholar

107. Ryan, John A., “Birth Control: An Open Letter,” America 13:8 (5 06 1915): 200.Google Scholar

108. Ryan, , “Family Limitation,” 684.Google Scholar

109. Francis P. Sloan to Rev. John Burke, 11 Dec. 1918. CUAA, National Catholic War Council papers, 10/11/19.