Catholicism and the Culture Wars

Week 1
Leo XIII's forgotten encyclicals

Leo XIII's papacy was a major one for the Church. He is perhaps best known for his encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which many see as the beginning of the Church's Catholic Social Tradition. However, Rerum Novarum emerges within a slightly longer history of engagement with secular politics by Leo. In this session, we will be looking at a number of earlier, lesser-known texts which develop the themes that defined his papacy politically.

Week 2
The Church encounters feminism

Pius XI's Casti conubii took many themes around marriage from Leo's papacy, and turned them towards criticising feminism. In doing so, he articulates many of the themes that would come to shape the Church's confrontation with the sexual revolution, including sexual technologies.

Week 3
Vatican II and aggiornamento

The Second Vatican Council was a watershed moment for the Church, not least because it embodied a shift in the Church's stance towards the world. The council was characterised by an aggiornamento, or 'opening' that moved it (at least partially) from the predominantly oppositional approach of Leo and Pius' papacies towards one that could view the world in a more hopeful vein. This session will explore this shift, its significance, and its ambivalences.

Week 4
Humanae Vitae and the sexual revolution

Paul VI's 1968 encyclical, Humanae vitae, is famous for its condemnation of contraception. This condemnation was seen at the time as a walk-back of many of the developments of Vatican II. In doing so, it also centred issues to do with feminism and the sexual revolution in the Church's ambivalent relationship to the world. This session looks at this controversy, as well as the way that longstanding oppositional themes around the Church's relationship to the world came to be configured in its aftermath.

Week 5
The Catholic Church and 'gender ideology'

 This session explores the most high-profile contemporary expression of the themes we have traced throughout the module: the Church's battle against 'gender ideology'. We will see how post-Humanae vitae fears around feminism developed into narratives around 'gender feminism' in the context of the UN Conference on Women in the mid-90s, which were subsequently adopted by the Church itself. We will then see how these developed in turn to frame contemporary teachings around transness.

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