Most people presume that the great transition took place in the 1960s, and specifically at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), when the Church officially signalled its openness to secular statehood, religious freedom and human rights. This is a mistake. Historians are reluctant to issue laws of history, but here’s one that seems reasonable: massive institutions do not fundamentally transform themselves in moments of relative placidity. The process requires too much energy and too much buy-in from cautious elites. They transform in moments of crisis, destruction and fear. The early 1960s were not such a moment for the Church. The 1930s, however, were. [...]
Their goal was no longer to offer an alternative to modernity, nor to even imagine that the Church would be at the centre of some future society. The goal, instead, was to use modern language to make claims on secular states so that Catholics could protect the Church, and see at least some Catholic principles codified into law. It was in these years, and for these reasons, that Catholics accepted human rights, religious freedom and secular modernity. [...]
Catholics in the 1930s were faced with an agonising set of choices. If the holistic Catholic renewal they had long dreamed of was off the table, what should take its place? Where should the Church stake its claim? Most Catholic leaders and thinkers opted to retrench around the family. For the first time, Catholics placed sexual and reproductive ethics at the very centre of their social and political mission. They did so for two reasons. First, Catholics reasoned that control over the family, as a site of moral education and instruction, would ensure institutional survival in a world that seemed to be falling apart. Secondly, Catholics reasoned (with some justice) that Catholic family ethics would be acceptable to secular politicians, whether it be Hitler or Franklin Roosevelt. These figures, after all, had their own reasons to oppose contraception, divorce and homosexuality.
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