Amanda's Blog

Topic: The upset created within the Catholic Church over Pople Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae and how it changed the church.

For my research project, I have found a wide variety of literature that relates to my topic in some way or another. Some of the books that I have found provide a history of the Catholic church, some provide an argument for or against the Humanae Vitae, some discuss how the Humanae Vitae changed the church, and others examine the theological and philosophical aspects of the document and the issues surrounding it.  As you can see, none of the books that I have found really agree on a central thesis or cover the exact same topic. So, unlike the literary analysis that we read in class I won’t be able to build the argument of some books on that of others. What I will be able to do, though, is begin a conversation about the birth of the debate surrounding various means of contraception and the Humanae Vitae  and fit the different books into it as the topics come up. I’m visualizing a time line, but instead of the points being determined by publication date, they will be determined by the order of the topic of each book.

The main primary source that I’m using is an article written in Time Magazine in August of 1968, nearly three week after Pope Paul VI issued the Humanae Vitae. This document was a formal statement from the Catholic Church against any other method of birth control except for the “rhythm method.” It’s a pretty lengthy article that spans seven online pages. It presents different opinions of Catholics about the content of the Humanae Vitae from across the country as well as other parts of the world. Also, it addresses another major issue of the time: the population explosion and how the Catholic Church related to the issue. This article will help me assess how the general public felt about the Humanae Vitae and get a feel for the tensions that were felt throughout the Catholic Church. Some limitations that I might run into, though, are that although Time Magazine is a widely respected magazine, there is always a chance that the writer’s personal thoughts could be worked into each article.

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/  << This is an example of a good site. The .gov in the webaddress indicates that it is a government website and is reliable. In addition, its a national archive webpage with plenty of primary doccuments.

http://www.jfk-assassination.de/articles/index.php  << This is an example of a bad site. Although the information looks reliable, there is no bibliography or any sources listed. In addition, the site hasn’t been updated since 2006.

Choosing a topic ended up being both harder than I expected and somewhat easier than I expected at the same time. Initially I thought that I wanted to do something about colonial Virginia or the Civil War but I realized that those topics were sort of my safe zone. We’ve been learning about colonial Virginia since literally the third grade and I took a whole course on the Civil War last year so I decided that maybe I should challenge myself and go with something different. This led me to the question that Professor Fernsebner asked me the first day of class “What are your interests?” The role that women play has always interested me so that was something and to make it easier I picked a time period (the 1950s) To be honest, I just put it into Google, literally “Women/ 1950s.” Regardless of how elementary it was, it eventually led me to my raw topic: the birth control pill. After that I was able to narrow down a Professor that I thought would be helpful, Professor Moon. She gave me background on the birth control pill and offered some suggestions on primary sources that she thought would be helpful. So, as of right now I plan on seeing what I can find on how the creation of the birth control created a divide in the Catholic Church. 

Explaining why I chose history as my major is always a tricky thing. Usually I want to respond “Why is history not your major?” because it’s hard to convince me that any other subject could be as captivating as history is. For me, the past is like a novel, one that spans thousands of years, has millions of characters, and is a valuable key to ensure that we don’t repeat any of the same mistakes that occurred in the past. Depending on which angle you’re studying, the same situation can be seen in many different complex ways, and there is something magical about studying the way that people lived in pervious times and how the choices that they made and the following consequences shaped the world into what it is today. Although subjects like biology and psychology are important as well, I believe that by studying history we are ensuring ourselves a better brighter future.