The Structure of Theological Revolutions: How the Fight Over Birth Control Transformed American Catholicism - Hardcover

Massa SJ, Mark S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0190851406 ISBN 13: 9780190851408

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2018

Synopsis

On July 29, 1968, Pope Paul VI ended years of discussion and study by Catholic theologians and bishops by issuing an encyclical on human sexuality and birth control entitled Humanae Vitae: "On Human Life." That document, which declared that "each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life," lead to widespread dissent and division within the Church, particularly in the United States. The divide that Humanae Vitae opened up is still with us today.
Mark Massa argues that American Catholics did not simply ignore and dissent from the encyclical's teachings on birth control, but that they also began to question the entire system of natural law theology that had undergirded Catholic thought since the days of Aquinas. Natural law is central to Catholic theology, as some of its most important teachings on issues such as birth control, marriage, and abortion rest on natural law arguments. Drawing inspiration from Thomas Kuhn's classic work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Massa argues that Humanae Vitae caused a paradigm shift in American Catholic thought, one that has had far-reaching repercussions.
How can theology-the study of God, whose nature is imagined to be eternal and unchanging- change over time? This is the essential question that The Structure of Theological Revolutions sets out to answer. Massa makes the controversial claim that Roman Catholic teaching on a range of important issues is considerably more provisional and arbitrary than many Catholics think.

About this title

About the Author

Mark S. Massa, S.J. is Professor of Church History and Director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. His most recent book is The American Catholic Revolution: How the Sixties Changed the Church Forever (OUP, 2010).

Review

"Massa provides a magisterial overview of [Thomas S.] Kuhn's thought. This is important not only because theologians should learn from the natural and social sciences, but also because Kuhn's model of paradigm shifts enlightens our contemporary Catholic life in the United States... This book is itself a revolution in a journey toward a fuller understanding of natural law discourse in the church. It does not disappoint."-Daniel Cosacchi, America: The Jesuit Review

"Intellectual breadth, empathy and precision, so rarely found together, and so illustrative of the best of humankind, are here combined into a tour de force. Anyone who wishes to be serious about the Catholic intellectual life must henceforth have a well-dog-eared copy of this book on their shelves." -- Michael Sean Winters, National Catholic Reporter

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0190851406
• ISBN 13: 9780190851408
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 232