Schism of ’68

Alana Harris is Lecturer in Modern British History at King’s College London, UK. She has previously published Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism, 1945-1982 (2013) and Love and Romance in Britain, 1918-1970 (with Timothy W. Jones, Palgrave, 2014).

“The book offers some important lessons and frameworks for a project which could work on a global scale. … this book broadens our understanding of how ‘liberal’ ideas intersected with religious beliefs at a moment of profound agitation.” (David Geiringer, British Catholic History, Vol. 34 (3), May, 2019)“A genuinely groundbreaking collection, where international and interdisciplinary new scholarship explores the relationship between Roman Catholicism and global developments in sexuality and women's reproductive rights in the `radical 1960s'. … The Schism of'68: Catholics, Contraception and `Humanae Vitae' in Europe, 1945-1975 presents a multifaceted and meticulously researched scholarly collection, and isa sophisticated contribution to our understanding of the past.” (Scriptable, rtreview.org, Issue 21, June, 2018)

• 1. Introduction: The Summer of ’68 – Beyond the Secularization Thesis; Alana Harris.- Part I: To the Barricades.- 2. Humanae Vitae, Catholic Attitudes to Birth Control in the Netherlands and Transnational Church Politics, 1930-75; Chris Dols and Maarten van den Bos.- 3. Of Human Love. Catholics Campaigning for Sexual Aggiornamento in postwar Belgium; Wannes Dupont.- 4. ‘A Galileo-crisis not a Luther crisis’? English Catholics’ attitudes to Contraception; Alana Harris.- Part II: Episcopal Controversies.- 5. Religion and Contraception in Comparative Perspective – Switzerland (1950-70); Caroline Rusterholz.- 6. Attempted Disobedience. Humanae Vitae in West Germany and Austria; Katharina Ebner and Maria Mesner.- Part III: Christian Science and Catholic Conservatism.- 7.The Politics of Catholic Medicine. ‘The pill’ and Humanae Vitae in Portugal;  Tiago Pires Marques.- 8. Humanae Vitae, Birth Control and the Forgotten History of the Catholic church in Poland Agnieszka Kościańska.- Part IV: Covering the Controversy.- 9. A Kind of Reformation in Miniature. The Paradoxical Impact of Humanae Vitae in Italy; Massimo Faggioli and Francesca Vassalle.- 10. Love in the Time of el Generalísimo: Debates about the pill in Spain before and after Humanae Vitae; Agata Ignaciuk.- 11. Reactions to the Papal encyclical Humanae Vitae: the French Conundrum; Martine Sevegrand.- Part V: Church, State and Contraception.- 12. The Best News Ireland ever got? Humanae Vitae’s Reception on the Pope’s Green Island; Peter Murray.- 13. Catholicism behind the Iron Curtain: Czechoslovak and Hungarian Responses to Humanae Vitae; Mary Heimann and Gábor Szegedi.- 14. Looking for Love – an Afterword; Dagmar Herzog.- Index