Publications, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
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Browsing Publications, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media by Subject "Catholic"
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Item A Human Being, and Not a Mere Social Factor: Catholic Strategies for Dealing with Sterilization Statutes in the 1920s(Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History, 2004-06) Leon, SharonThis article reviews the developing strategies of Catholic opposition to state laws for compulsory sterilization of so-called ‘feeble-minded’ residents of state institutions during the 1920s. In 1927 the Supreme Court, in its landmark decision Buck v. Bell, affirmed the constitutionality of such laws. This article traces the work of Catholic moral theologians, such as John A. Ryan, and representatives of various lay organizations in opposing such laws and educating Catholic laity on the natural law issues in the debate. In 1930 the National Catholic Welfare Conference published four pamphlets in a series entitled ‘Problems of Mental Deficiency’ that provided a full compliment of medical, legal, and moral objections to the laws. On 31 December 1930 Pope Pius XI in his encyclical ‘Casti Connubii’ provided an authoritative pronouncement on eugenics and sterilization that reaffirmed Catholic opposition to eugenics policy initiatives.Item Hopelessly Entangled in Nordic Pre-Suppositions: Catholic Participation in the American Eugenics Society in the 1920s(Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2004) Leon, SharonThis article examines the involvement of U.S. Catholics in the American Eugenics Society during the 1920′s. While Catholics were often opponents of eugenics, John A. Ryan and John Montgomery Cooper, both Catholic priests and intellectuals, were prominent in the debate within the Committee on Cooperation with Clergymen of the American Eugenics Society. Ryan and Cooper repeatedly examined the scientific bases for eugenicists’ claims and sought to shift the movement away from its racist and classist elements. Soon after Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Casti Connubii formalized Catholic opposition to eugenics and other efforts to control reproduction, such as birth control, Ryan and Cooper finally broke with the AES.Item Tensions Not Unlike that Produced by a Mixed Marriage: Daniel Marshall and Catholic Challenges to Anti-Misecegenation Statutes(Catholic University of America Press, 2008) Leon, SharonIn 1948, the California Supreme Court declared the state’s anti-miscegenation statute unconstitutional. Twenty years before the U.S. Supreme Court came to the same conclusion in Loving v. Virginia, Daniel Marshall argued that his clients deserved the right to marry in California in part based on the fact that their church had no objections. Andrea Perez and Sylvester Davis were Catholics, and their attorney was a leading member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Catholic Interracial Council. The story of their efforts to overturn the anti-miscegenation statute sheds light on Catholic thinking about religious and racial differences with respect to marriage and the ways that that thinking interfaces with contemporary attitudes about race in a pluralistic American culture.