Rome, Italy, Sep 9, 2010 / 00:58 am
Vatican analyst Sandro Magister highlighted a recent book that shows a link between the widespread usage of contraception among Catholics in the early 20th century and the silence of clergy in presenting Church teachings on the subject.
In a Sept. 8 article in the Chiesa section of the Italian newspaper L'Espresso, Magister discussed the 2010 book from author Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna, a professor of demography at the University of Padua. The book, explained Magister, “analyzes and thoroughly explains for the first time – with documents never studied before – why the Church did not stop the spread of contraception" in the early 20th century.
Magister began his piece by stating that a “divergence” has existed between the teachings of the Church and individual Catholic practice long before contraceptives were even on the market. The Vatican analyst then discussed how the book cites a case study involving a model Catholic area in Italy during the first half of the 1900s.
“Rural Veneto was at the time the most Catholic region in Italy, with an extremely solid, grassroots presence of the Church,” Magister explained. “But even in Veneto in the first half of the twentieth century – where almost everyone went to Mass on Sundays and to confession at least once a year – the birth rate was cut in half in the span of one generation.”