Introduction
On 9 May 1933, in a speech given in Rome, the Extraordinary Delegate of the National Organisation for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy, Alberto Blanc, expounded ‘the moral, civil and national importance of marriage and the birthrate’.Footnote 1 He recalled the motto of pro-natalist propaganda, ‘highest natality, least mortality’, and added that ‘fertility is inseparable from physical health, a normal psyche and the morality of conjugal unions’. The National Organisation for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy was established in 1925 as a ‘moral’ institution, designed to improve ‘the moral and physical conditions of mothers and children’ (Bresci Reference Bresci1993). Morality was an essential feature of the rhetoric about the ‘defence of the race’ and was a reason for Catholics to favour the Fascist regime. At the same assembly in May 1933 the commissioner of Catholic Action declared:‘[demographic] propaganda is grounded in Catholic doctrine, which has always celebrated the family’. In his view, ‘parish priests, religious associations linked to Catholic Action, and especially the Catholic Unions of Men and Women, contribute most to the healthy demographic politics of the government’.
In this article I will draw on archival and printed material to show that the control of public morality and the support for reproduction met both Catholic and Fascist interests. I want to stress the importance of sexual normalisation, as well as masculine and patriarchal values, as key sources of consensus and as part of the strategic alliance between the Fascist government and the Catholic Church. The word race can hardly fail to evoke subsequent events leading up to the Italian 1938 racial laws. In this article I choose not to follow its connections with anti-semitism in order to focus exclusively on the link between eugenics and Catholic morality, especially in the years between 1926 and 1931. This essay is divided into four parts. It examines the meaning of marriage for Catholics in the long process of secularisation, as a premise for a productive conversation about morality; the idea, shared by Mussolini and the Catholic Church, of fighting ‘against the contraceptive mentality’; the report of the interior minister to the Vatican Secretary of State about the birth control movement; and the meaning of the encyclical Casti connubii and the penal code.
Historiography usually emphasises the more evident interest shared by Catholicism and Fascism – the hostility to liberal values and Bolshevism (Pollard Reference Pollard and Bosworth2010, 175; Chamedes Reference Chamedes2013, 144). But the Catholic support for Fascism was more than a continuation of the ‘culture wars’ between Catholicism and anti-clerical secularism (Pollard Reference Pollard and Bosworth2010, 176). In the belief that historical research should move beyond narrowly political interpretations, I will argue here that the cultural component of totalitarianism had its autonomous dimension. Following the pivotal interpretation of George Mosse (Reference Mosse1985), my essay focuses on the primary importance of myths and ideologies and on the centrality of ‘normal sexuality’ in the construction of popular consensus. In this context normal has to be understood more as traditional. Whereas some scholars have argued that the initiative to reinforce masculinity was antithetical to Catholic morality (Benadusi Reference Benadusi, Dingee and Pudney2012, 6), I claim that the promotion of masculine values, and in particular patriarchy and anti-feminism, were well suited to Catholic morality and represented a reason for Catholics to endorse and advocate Fascist demographic policies. In this way, Catholics traded off their aversion to the militaristic and imperialistic aims of the Fascist demographic programme in return for control of public morality.
Resisting any attempt at secular sex reform was profitable for both parties. But the Catholic Church and the Fascist government did not just oppose secular morality. They effectively built a narrative about the traditional family, religion and nation. The combination of Catholic morality and Fascist demography formed the optimal cultural breeding ground for Italian eugenics, a set of ideologies of race, nation, and gender, centred on population growth and interwoven with social hygiene and welfare policies. This does not mean that Catholics dominated the Italian scientific environment, even though some of them, like Agostino Gemelli, were quite vocal within the movement, but that Catholic principles, with their emphasis on patriarchal values, shaped the narrative about sexuality and reproduction. The safeguarding of traditional patriarchal values combined with the regulation of public morality, overcame, in the view of Catholic authorities, their disquiet about the violence perpetrated by Mussolini's Fascist squads and the consequent loss of civil rights. Nevertheless, there were differences between the Church and the regime at both a local and national level. At the local level there was anti-clerical Fascist resentment towards Catholic initiatives and demands in the field of public morality.
Mussolini's emphasis on the regulation of morality gained consensus and won the trust of Catholics more than other apparently critical issues. The great majority of Catholics enthusiastically applauded any initiative aimed at restoring traditional mores, re-establishing family values, and undoing new gender models (Verucci Reference Verucci1988, 51; Wanrooij Reference Wanrooij1990, 101ff.). Catholic authorities envisioned in ‘the man of providence’ a concrete possibility of returning to the ancien régime, where Christian marriage was the symbol of triumph over the modern secular State and new conceptions of sexuality circulating within it. Restoring a lost hierarchy between men and women and reviving an endangered masculinity seemed the most straightforward way to restore true Christian society and to achieve the demographic ambitions of the prime minister. Although there was a remarkable contradiction between propaganda and effective measures, as far as family, reproduction and morality were concerned, Catholic and Fascist authorities were on the same page for almost 20 years.
Cultural harmony between the Vatican and Fascism came after decades of clashes with liberal governments. In the second half of the nineteenth century, marriage had been a source of extreme tension, being the badge of the ‘culture wars’ between Catholicism and anti-clerical secularism. The Catholic Church had opposed the efforts of the recently united Italian State to take over jurisdiction of the conjugal sacrament. Unwilling to acknowledge the unification process and the expropriation and ‘secularisation’ of pontifical territories, Pius IX had condemned secular and liberal ideas, listed in the Syllabus of modern error, and had forbidden Catholics to take part in the political life of the country. Marriage was not the most important reason for this clash, but was the most emblematic. As the General of Jesuits, Wlodzimierz Ledóchowski, wrote in a letter of 1930, Leo XIII published the encyclical Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae (1880) on Christian marriage, with the aim of defending the rights of the Church against the ‘arrogance of the State’.Footnote 2 After the entry of Fascists into the Italian parliament, this conflict between the State and the Church – the so-called Roman Question – faded away. In 1929 this agreement gained formal approval: Pope Pius XI and Mussolini signed the Lateran Pacts, which reinstated Church privileges and made Catholicism the State religion of Fascist Italy.
The Catholic Church and the Fascist government agreed on countering any attempt at secular sexual reform and on that built a solid association. As is well known, in many countries numerous discussions on sex reform took place in the interwar period (Herzog Reference Herzog2011, 7). As a result of a general debate about prostitution and venereal diseases, in some countries, such as Germany, a multifaceted social movement (Sexualreformbewegung) composed of feminist activists, sexologists, physicians, and politicians, arose with the aim of discussing sex and decriminalising birth control and abortion (Grossman Reference Grossman1995, 15). In his final report as a nuncio in Germany, Eugenio Pacelli wrote about what profoundly worried him – new conceptions of sexuality and sexual relationships as well as a high number of divorces (Unterburger and Wolf Reference Unterburger and Wolf2006, 125). This was the new secular morality that called for a rethinking of marriage, the right to conjugal eroticism, and gender equality. To some extent, the First World War had challenged established conventions in Italy as well.
The Catholic Church could not surrender its hegemony to this secular version of sexual morals based on new conceptions of sexuality. Sexology no longer regarded sexuality as an object of moral regulation, but as an object of inquiry and secular normativity. Most disquieting from the Catholic point of view was the subversion of the justification for the conjugal bond. While sexuality was attaining new autonomous meanings, reproduction mainly depended on the new principle of responsibility towards the race, which was not simply the prelude to the Nazis’ T4 eugenics programme. In many northern European countries and in the United States, reproduction was framed by a new set of eugenic beliefs. Eugenics represented the most popular modern language for talking about reproduction. And the rising discourse of sexology and sexual science often intertwined with values manifested by eugenic culture.
Between the wars the activists Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes used eugenic arguments to make their feminist claims socially acceptable, even though male eugenicists never took them seriously (Chesler Reference Chesler2007; Debenham Reference Debenham2018). Sanger was the putative inventor of the expression ‘birth control’. In 1921 she claimed at the first American birth control conference in New York: ‘We are in a condition of society today, not only here, but practically in every country of the world, where the masses of the unfit have propagated to such an extent that our intelligence is not able to grasp or cope with the conditions so created. […] Now the time has come when we must all join together in stopping at its source misery, ignorance, delinquency and crime. This is the programme of the birth control movement’ (American birth control conference 1921, 15).
In a similar development to that in other Catholic countries in southern Europe (Quine Reference Quine, Bashford and Levine2010), the Italian version of eugenics promoted instead demographic growth and a model of the traditional family as a solution to the decline and degeneration of society. And for this reason, it meshed harmoniously with Catholic doctrine, which fitted in well with and fully supported Italian pro-natalism. Historiography usually labels Italian pro-natalism as ‘positive eugenics’, in opposition to the ‘negative’ one practised in northern European countries and in the United States, which was based on restraining ‘unfit’ individuals from reproducing (Adams Reference Adams1990; Kevles Reference Kevles1995). The historiography of eugenics cursorily acknowledges the Catholic contribution to the subject (Cassata Reference Cassata2006, 10). Francesco Cassata points out that the convergences between pro-natalist policies and familiar and reproductive Catholic morals were not only the result of political convenience but also the fruit of a common organicist conception of society (Cassata Reference Cassata and O'Loughlin2011). My essay will focus rather on the substantive link between Catholic discourse on morality and Italian pro-natalism.
The Italian combination of Catholic doctrine and populationist policies profoundly affected the way in which sexuality was commonly conceived and also prevented a discussion about voluntary parenthood, which in the view of British eugenicists took centre-stage (Carr-Saunders Reference Carr-Saunders1935). The very idea of voluntary parenthood was equivalent to what Catholics and Fascists called ‘the contraceptive mentality’, which was associated with the loss of religious values and included new roles for parents, in some cases equal relationships between partners, and a conception of sexuality per se, consciously detached from reproduction.
A spiritual transformation set against ‘the contraceptive mentality’
‘[Birth control] is based on the lack of faith in divine providence and […] has its roots in the selfishness of parents, especially of mothers, who already have the same rights as men and want to be free and live in hedonistic way on their husbands’ backs.’Footnote 3 This is an excerpt about birth control taken from a 1925 report by the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Pietro Fumasoni Biondi, addressed to the consistorial congregation. According to Mussolini and to Catholic authorities, materialist ideas – in their view mainly rife in countries with a Protestant majority – characterised the ‘contraceptive mentality’. It is noteworthy that materialist was a recurrent derogatory attribute and signpost for the Catholic and the Fascist rhetoric of the interwar age. As expressed by Mussolini, the term ‘materialist’ referred to a society that had lost its religious conscience and for this reason was a barren and immoral one, in which traditional values had been irreparably overthrown. This is the reason why reinforcing religious thinking, in Mussolini's view, was pivotal.
In spite of the large amount of Mussolini's writings and speeches that survive, it is impossible to know exactly when he began to develop his programme for the regeneration of the Italian populace. There is however a striking parallel between his early translation of a book about demographic decline and the effective rolling out of Fascist demographic policies. It would not be entirely inaccurate to claim that the idea of an alliance between the State and the Church against the ‘contraceptive mentality’ came primarily out of that book. Even though Mussolini had in fact been a vocal member of the Italian neo-Malthusian League, as prime minister he withdrew his previous support to the cause. In doing so, he was largely inspired by the pro-natalist thought of the German Catholic demographer Richard Korherr, a race theorist and future director of the Nazi department of statistics. Mussolini personally translated and wrote the preface to the Italian edition of Korherr's book Geburtenrückgang (Decline in the Birth Rate) (Korherr Reference Korherr and Mussolini1928).
According to Mussolini's reading of the German author, the power of a nation derived from its demographic weight with respect to other countries. Accordingly, ‘regeneration’ was therefore based on population growth. Mussolini fully agreed with Korherr's insight, sloganising it as: ‘Il numero è potenza’. By contrast, as indicated by their names – such as the French Ligue pour la Régénération Humaine – almost every neo-Malthusian league, in calling itself a birth control league, hoped to gain credibility through promoting the idea that only by controlling reproduction could the composition of society be improved. Negative eugenicists did not share the feminist point of view expressed by Sanger and Stopes, who emphasised women's agency in improving the conditions of society, but did give importance to the idea that fertility ought to and must be controlled, especially in well-defined social groups.
Korherr's book offers a unique overview of the cultural reasons behind the coalition for demographic growth and the regulation of morality. As stated in Geburtenrückgang, regeneration could result only from a ‘spiritual transformation’, if nourished by a ‘religious sentiment’. ‘With Caesarism alone we cannot win the battle of births. We need something more: a strong Church’ (Korherr Reference Korherr and Mussolini1928, my emphasis). Whereas other scholars have read this alliance as one in which the government took advantage of Catholic morality, without acknowledging it (Mantovani Reference Mantovani2004, 282), this manifesto gives weight to the view I am arguing here: that Mussolini was affirming his trust in a religious regeneration that could be deployed against urbanism and feminism to favour demographic growth.
Anti-feminism was a cornerstone of this rhetorical edifice. Korherr – translated by Mussolini – explained: ‘The Church must try to achieve, along with Caesarism, a spiritual transformation of our men so that marriage will become desirable again. In this bond the man and the woman are really united and the woman is mother and housewife’. Notwithstanding the involvement of women in mass organisations, from these pages it is evident how important their reproductive role was for the Italian eugenic project, and populationist rhetoric reflected that aspect (De Grazia Reference De Grazia1993, 41–76). In Korherr's view, demographic regeneration could result in practice from an alliance of State and Church ‘working against the voluntary restriction of births’ and ‘against women's emancipation’.
This spiritual transformation is the basis for the fight against the decline in the birthrate. This must be accomplished through the most convenient measures. The State should establish severe penalties for any kind of mockery of marriage, of the family, of maternity, and put in place measures against the restriction of births. It ought to protect agriculture, provide housing, and fight against urbanism, alcoholism and immorality. Furthermore, the State ought to stand against the excesses of women's emancipation, against prostitution, against divorce and abortion, and against birth control propaganda. It ought to care about babies, by supporting mothers and not by leaving them in foster care; it ought to fight against milk formula for babies and to protect mothers. […] The State must cater for large families […]. (Korherr Reference Korherr and Mussolini1928, 172)
Accordingly, starting in late 1925, an increasing number of initiatives marked the alliance against the ‘contraceptive mentality’ and immorality, which Catholics warmly welcomed. The collaboration happened at different levels. After taking over the government, Mussolini followed Korherr's guidelines and began to implement a set of policies to promote the growth of the population.Footnote 4 Pius XI publicly applauded the establishment of the National Organisation for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy, founded at the end of 1925. The institute was a crucial part of the emerging Italian welfare system (Saraceno, Reference Saraceno, Bock and Thane1994, 205), conceived on the one hand as an instrument of the new biomedical modernity and on the other as an instrument of control over women's bodies and morality, by monitoring single mothers in particular (Quine Reference Quine2012). Italian eugenics became not just a battle of births, but a fight against immorality and secular scientific views of sexuality.
Catholic acclamation for the regulation of public morality
Influential Catholics supported the endeavours of the government. The leader and founder of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Agostino Gemelli, wrote in numerous articles that he was utterly delighted that Mussolini had eventually supported Catholics in the fight against the contraceptive mentality, in which the Church had previously been completely isolated. He was particularly satisfied with the fact that Mussolini deemed ‘the religious conscience’ crucial to the demographic problem (Gemelli Reference Gemelli1928, 131). As we have seen, Mussolini framed the problem of ‘empty cradles’ in moral terms. For this reason, for Catholics it was important to achieve prominent standing in the Italian eugenics debate and to discredit Nordic eugenics as a pseudoscience, by associating it with sexology and with the feminist campaign for birth control. Referring to sexology and birth control was an easy way to destroy the credibility of this interpretation of eugenics, since Italian society was at the time quite conservative in that regard.
In 1924, at the first Italian conference on Social Eugenics, Gemelli began to strive for Catholicism to gain the leadership of Italian eugenics, stressing the role of Catholic morality ‘in opposition to the sloppiness of popularisers of birth control and brand-new doctrines on sexuality’ (Gemelli Reference Gemelli1924, 733–4). In his view, the Catholic Church could be the cornerstone of Italian eugenics, for it ‘subordinated the individual to the interest of society’. Gemelli succeeded in achieving an influential role as a Catholic eugenicist. He became the vice-president of the Italian Society for Genetics and Eugenics (Società Italiana di Genetica e Eugenica) and a member of the scientific committee of the Italian Committee for Population Study (Comitato Italiano per lo Studio della Popolazione) (Cassata Reference Cassata2006, 10). Thanks to the Catholic influence Italian eugenics progressively took on the significance of a battle against immorality and pseudoscience.
In Genoa in 1926 the Catholic Social Week, a periodic series of events designed to popularise Catholic social doctrine (Durand Reference Durand2006, 389), echoed ‘the battle of births’ by focusing on the topic of the Christian family (Lecrivain Reference Lécrivain and Maugenest1990, 152). Different sessions centred on morality and on sexual purity. Some were dedicated to the subject of birth control, analysed from the Catholic point of view. Women were banned from attending. In his intervention on birth control Gemelli spoke once again about Catholicism as a eugenic doctrine. In supporting Italian pro-natalism, he harshly criticised the argument that by rationalising births it was possible to select the perfect race.
Monsignor Giacinto Tredici, bishop of Brescia, talked about eugenics and defined birth control as a confused and illicit imposition on conjugal sexuality. According to him, sexual pleasure and reproduction could not be separated in any way. Tredici claimed that only a materialist mentality could allow birth control. Once again, the term ‘materialist’ indicated a society without a religious conscience, the cornerstone of traditional family values. A society of that kind could only be sterile and immoral.
The Catholic press highlighted any proposal to re-establish traditional morality. Catholic newspapers, such as L'Osservatore Romano and La Vita del Popolo, reported the discussions of the periodic Catholic Social Week, especially the sessions focussed on morality. L'Osservatore Romano commended Gemelli for having emphasised ‘the need to safeguard against all of the dangers of immorality, disseminated in the press and in theatres, conveyed through indecent fashion, present in corrupted circles, and spread through inappropriate forms of education, either pseudo-scientific or precocious, and materialist’.Footnote 5 The newspaper stressed the enlightened wisdom of the government, which was finally proposing a more reliable set of laws and the necessary ‘moral and material assistance’ to the family.
La Vita del Popolo opened its article by praising the Interior Minister, Luigi Federzoni, for having appointed a special committee to determine ‘the administrative and social police resources necessary to protect the family institution against multiple dangers’.Footnote 6 It is important to know that Federzoni was a key figure in the mediation between the Vatican and the Fascist government (Vittoria Reference Vittoria1995, 733). He pushed for the emphasis on morality and designed the committee with the main purpose of opposing ‘propaganda’ for birth control. Catholics enthusiastically received the inaugural speech delivered by Federzoni. Talking about the problem of births, he underlined the coincidence of Fascist morality, grounded in the idea of the subordination of the individual to the superior ends of the nation, and Catholic morality, which held that begetting offspring was the primary purpose of marriage. According to Federzoni, the state and the Church were both united in fighting ‘hedonistic, materialist, individualist’ ideas and the urban lifestyle (Verucci Reference Verucci1988, 51). After the establishment of the committee and later of the Organisation for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy, L'Osservatore Romano expressed admiration for the work of the government.
Considering the importance of the problem and the specific link it has with morality, it does not seem inappropriate to summarise and examine the Principle of Population to show its errors and dangers. For our part, we aim to contribute in this way to enhance the ‘mentality’ and the ‘anti-Malthusian’ attitude, towards which the current government is striving, with measures that could be discussed in terms of their practical efficacy, but should be praised for their social and moral value.Footnote 7
After the establishment of the committee for the ‘protection of the family institution against multiple dangers’, the State and the Church continued their collaboration by exchanging confidential files about immorality, especially thanks to the mediation of the Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi, who was a personal friend of Benito Mussolini. In Tacchi Venturi's personal file, housed in the Roman archive of the Society of Jesus, there are numerous documents about his conversations with members of the government about ‘immoral publications’, ‘immoral movies’, and ‘pornography’.Footnote 8 He had an ongoing exchange with the Interior Minister Luigi Federzoni about the ‘protection of morality’. For instance, Venturi wrote to Federzoni in 1926 about the diffusion of obscene books in Bologna in order to ‘remind him of the promise made by the government about suppressing pornography’.Footnote 9 Federzoni replied that ‘until such time as there was a specific law, he would urge civil authorities to punish those who tried to traffic in stimulating morbid instincts in humans’.Footnote 10
These conversations were behind the preparation for Article 112 of the Consolidated Law on Public Security, which aimed at preventing the spread of writings and pictures contrary to ‘morality and public morals’, and Article 113, which forbade writings that ‘illustrated means suited to prevent conception, to interrupt pregnancy and showed their use or provided indications about how to get hold of them and how to use them, even if this happens in an indirect way or on scientific or therapeutic pretexts’.Footnote 11 In 1926 Federzoni gave Tacchi Venturi a report on the diffusion of birth control movements around the world. And Venturi communicated the satisfaction of the Holy See with the work of the government.
Excellency,
In a conversation just had with the Cardinal Secretary of State, to whom I passed on the report that you gave me about the international neo-Malthusian movement, His Eminence was pleased to show me his satisfaction for the holy work that your Excellency and the government are doing to secure Italy from this heinous campaign. I have good reasons to believe that in addition to the effective and traditional means with which the Church has always fought such perverse doctrines and its practical applications, some further steps will be taken to tame the growing danger. In this way, the joint forces of the two authorities, the ecclesiastical and the civil, will join together, with God's help, to head off such a dreadful scourge, at least from our homeland. Footnote 12
The report of the Interior Minister on birth control movements
The report passed to the Church by the Interior Minister was by an anonymous author, and entitled ‘The International Neo-Malthusian Movement’.Footnote 13 Even though the American birth control movement did not describe itself in this way, in clerical and Fascist environments it was common to add the term ‘neo-Malthusian’ to describe the movement in a derogatory way. The first section of the memorandum described the network of birth control leagues, their statutes and aims. Among their aims, the first – flagged by either the writer or someone else in the Vatican – was ‘drawing the attention of public opinion and governments to the dangers of overpopulation’. According to the report, the American birth control league had the following additional aims: ‘diminishing or curbing overpopulation by spreading birth control information’, ‘fighting laws contrary to propaganda for birth control’, ‘recommending healthcare professionals to educate people’, ‘facilitating race betterment by urging parents to limit and avoid offspring in the case of hereditary diseases’, ‘promoting sexual responsibility to limit venereal diseases, and sex education’.
The document then summarised the history of birth control campaigning, trying to separate the Malthusian tradition from the one – in the writer's view less honourable – deriving from neo-Malthusians like Robert Dale Owen and Charles Knowlton (McLaren Reference Mclaren1990; Jütte Reference Jütte2008). The anonymous writer associated the birth control campaign tout court with Anglo-Saxon culture. He enumerated famous intellectuals who adhered to the neo-Malthusian cause – the sexologist Havelock Ellis, the philosopher Bertrand Russell, and the economist John Maynard Keynes.
The report, though, focused on the leadership of Margaret Sanger, probably because, under her guidance, the movement was considered a direct threat to Catholicism. After a first clash with the Archbishop of New York, Patrick Hayes, in the United States, Sanger had openly attacked the Catholic Church (Pozzi Reference Pozzi, Melloni, Kertzer and Gallagher2012). And the feminist perspective pursued by Sanger and other leaders of the movement was in complete antithesis to Fascist ideology and Catholic doctrine. As the book Geburtenrückgang that inspired Mussolini argued, in the eugenic society the woman was mother and housewife. By contrast, Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes contributed considerably to framing the topic of contraception in terms of women's right to control their own bodies. For instance, a central tenet in both their campaigns concerned the right of women to sexuality and to voluntary pregnancy.
It is important to underline here the significance for Catholic and Fascist authorities of Sanger's militancy. From their perspective it was more a cultural conflict with contrasting values – the contraceptive mentality went hand-in-hand with immorality and feminism – than a mere preoccupation with demographic decline. The report claimed that:
This movement has a feminist aim. For this reason, it can be included in the general feminist agenda of women's emancipation. Birth control [in English in the original text] is aimed at freeing them from maternal cares. Therefore, it targets women and it is spread through women. […] This is a rather North-American conception, which reflects Anglo-Saxon materialism.Footnote 14
The report depicted feminist activists with sarcasm, emphasising that they invoked the eugenic idea that it was ‘not possible to pursue the betterment of the race without birth control’, thereby attracting sympathy in ‘morally healthy social classes and even in cultural circles’. As the report reveals, both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities were concerned about the involvement of the League of Nations in Geneva in the international birth control movement (Connelly Reference Connelly2009; Chesler Reference Chesler2007), although Margaret Sanger's plan for a population agency within the League of Nations did not succeed. Nevertheless, she was able to organise an international event in Geneva, the World Population Conference. Even though the anonymous report did not mention the conference, the idea that the organisation was ‘located close to [the Italian] border’ was a source of major concern for the government and a reason for sharing information with the Vatican. The anonymous writer declared: ‘It is for this reason I took the liberty to draw the attention of your Eminence to this movement’. He expressed the wish that Catholic public opinion would contribute to counter ‘such a dangerous movement’.
Some further steps: the encyclical Casti connubii and the penal code
Both civil and ecclesiastical authorities worked to oppose the ‘imminent risk’, the proximity of the birth control movement. An anonymous note, to which was attached the business card of the Italian consul in Canada, Eugenio Bonardelli, addressed to the Vatican section for Relations with States, stated that it was not likely that the ‘question of birth control would be debated during the assemblies of the League of Nations in Geneva.’ But it continued:
However, given the fact that the principles [of the campaign] clashed with Catholic morals, the Duce's guidelines and the demographic policies of the government, the minister had already taken the necessary measures. Italian delegates had been told to watch over the committees in Geneva in order to prevent the discussion about birth control from developing further and, should they do so, to speak up to mark their [Italian] dissent.’Footnote 15
When Tacchi Venturi alluded to some further steps to be taken ‘to tame the growing danger’, he was referring to other initiatives of Catholic authorities against the birth control movement. A few months after Mussolini had officially launched the demographic campaign (Ipsen Reference Ipsen1992), Pope Pius XI commissioned from Agostino Gemelli a survey on voluntary birth limitation, ‘in preparation for a pontifical act against neo-Malthusianism’.Footnote 16 The pope requested further information and called on Gemelli to take part in the World Population Conference a few days hence. Already briefed by the interior minister, the pope was concerned about the event, since the organiser, Margaret Sanger, did not conceal her goal of spreading the word about birth control and seizing international attention within the League of Nations.Footnote 17 Gemelli sent Marcello Boldrini on his behalf. Boldrini was a statistician at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and a former student and colleague of Corrado Gini, the most eminent theorist of Fascist demographic policies (Cassata Reference Cassata2006). Both Gini and Boldrini went to the Geneva conference. This provides a clear illustration of the entanglement of the Vatican, the University of the Sacred Heart and Fascist demography.
Gemelli's study integrated part of the documentation provided by the interior minister. He claimed from the beginning that the lack of morality was the primary cause of depopulation. In common with the report of the minister, his survey separated the thought of Malthus, which Gemelli appreciated, from the theories and practices of neo-Malthusianism. Furthermore, Gemelli focused on recent sexological theories supporting ‘the contraceptive mentality’.Footnote 18 He referred in particular to Marie Stopes’ idea that sexual abstinence was harmful, which of course was antithetical to his understanding. As Gemelli reported, Stopes claimed that the conjugal act was beneficial to the mind, the spirit and to the mutual attachment of the partners. As he also argued later (Gemelli Reference Gemelli1933), he maintained that there was an important difference between sexual abstinence and contraception. Whereas sexual abstinence was of moral value, contraception meant just ‘ridding sexuality of obligations, cares, concerns and sufferings deriving from childbirth, but at the same time enjoying sexual pleasure, which nature intends should be coupled with generation’.
The problem from the Catholic point of view was the subversion of traditional values. The ideological alliance with Fascism worked as long as it provided a propitious cultural environment for reinstating traditional morality, with its emphasis on patriarchal families and its ban on contraception. In 1930, Pope Pius XI eventually published the pontifical act he had begun to plan in 1927. The encyclical Casti connubii on Christian marriage, which drew on previous surveys and reports, represented his biggest effort to ‘tame the growing danger’. Talking about Casti connubii, Mussolini declared to the nuncio to Italy, Monsignor Francesco Borgongini Duca, that the encyclical had been an act of great courage. ‘Did you remember, nuncio, that I said that the world is collapsing? Well, in this world falling into decay, only the Catholic Church has the strength to speak in this way.’Footnote 19 It was the first modern papal pronouncement about birth control, abortion and eugenics and strongly reaffirmed gender hierarchy (Pozzi Reference Pozzi2013; Pozzi Reference Pozzi2014; Pozzi Reference Pozzi, Sägesser and Vanderpelen-Diagre2017).In the text there was an explicit reference to collaboration between ecclesiastical and civil authorities against ‘treacherous dangers’, which attests to the importance of the dialogue that had occurred in the preceding years.
May the two supreme authorities (civil and ecclesiastical), without any mutual detriment to rights and sovereign prerogatives, join and associate in harmony and with friendly agreements, for the common good of the one and the other society, and may there result from their collaboration a common concern with marriage, so that treacherous dangers and imminent ruin can be removed from Christian conjugal unions.Footnote 20
The idea that this alliance of authorities ought to protect the family against multiple dangers was common to all the documents mentioned. Mussolini as well as Catholics interpreted the diffusion of birth control as a moral problem. As a consequence of previous actions, such as the Consolidated Law on Public Security, against writings and pictures offending ‘morality and public morals’, the Justice Minister Alfredo Rocco promoted the reform of the Penal Code. The text was drafted in 1927 (Betta Reference Betta, Betta, Caglioti and Papadia2012) and included a section entitled ‘crimes against the integrity and the health of the race’, which was known to be the result of Mussolini's personal intervention (Detragiache Reference Detragiache1980). Section X prohibited abortion, birth control, temporary and permanent sterilisation.Footnote 21 Within Section X Article 553 in particular stated: ‘Anyone who publicly encourages contraceptive practices or distributes propaganda in favour of them is to be sentenced to imprisonment of up to one year and fined up to 80,000 lira’. The minister claimed that the norms were in the interests not just of morality, but also of the integrity of the race. However, though Article 553 was included in ‘crimes against morality’, Section X did not include any actual measure promoting the ‘integrity of the race’.
As well as demographers, physicians played a major role in the implementation of demographic policies and in supporting the battle for morality. The physician Giuseppe Cattani, for example, began his book on the hygiene of marriage by inveighing against the moral corruption of society and its consequences for marriage (Cattani Reference Cattani1929, 1). In a book devoted to the hygiene of maternity, the gynaecologist Sebastiano di Francesco wrote about ‘the social danger of neo-Malthusian ideas’, ‘their deep, detrimental repercussions on the family and their immorality’ as well as about ‘hedonism and the physical and psychological harm caused by contraceptive practices’ (Di Francesco Reference Di Francesco1929, 135). The Catholic gynaecologist and senator Ernesto Pestalozza was at the forefront of the fight against ‘the contraceptive mentality’. In 1926 the interior minister appointed him head of the special committee for the analysis of the administrative and social police resources necessary ‘to protect the family institution against multiple dangers’. He was also on the advisory board of the Organisation for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy and contributed to the design of new laws on public health and to more severe restrictions on birth control and abortion. In the journal La clinica ostetrica, Pestalozza explained why the Italian Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology was committed to the fight against birth control and praised the new penal code for the measures now being taken against it (Pestalozza Reference Pestalozza1931b, 1–5).
In the same year Pestalozza declared that Fascist demography, the reform of the penal code and the encyclical Casti connubii ‘represented the Italian answer to negative eugenics practised in northern Europe’. As he wrote in the preface of a book by his fellow gynaecologist Roberto Bompiani, this answer met ‘the temperament of our race and our country's needs’ (Bompiani Reference Bompiani1931). According to Pestalozza, Bompiani, and their colleague Emilio Alfieri (Alfieri Reference Alfieri1930), sexuality found its purpose in procreation, since in their view the ultimate goal of sexuality was the conservation of species (Zocchi Reference Zocchi2007). Believing in the importance of procreation and condemning the immorality of contraception, physicians also deemed Catholic sexual morals essential to the regeneration of the race. Bompiani underlined that Catholic morals supported demographic policies with the authority of the Church. In an article in L'Osservatore Romano, Pestalozza also claimed:
For those who have an interest in problems related to population and the defence of the race, two recent events acquire a special meaning. These are, in chronological order, the publication of the new penal code and the encyclical on Christian marriage by His Holiness the pontiff. The State and the Church agree perfectly on all that has to do with strict compliance with the fecundity of the race and the holy function of maternity. They are united in the most resolute way in the fight against contraceptive devices, against abortion, and against sterilisation. (Pestalozza Reference Pestalozza1931a)
In the opening remarks at the first conference of Catholic physicians in 1932 the archbishop of Florence, Monsignor Elia Dalla Costa, argued that by following the ‘thought of the supreme pontiff, physicians could observe at the same time the government norms that forbade abortion and limitation of births, and defended maternity, infancy, and childhood’.Footnote 22
Conclusion: immorality, pseudoscience and feminism
As evidenced in the sources, Catholic morality was the ideological pillar of the Italian version of eugenics. As we have seen, Mussolini's ideas on population growth reflected the inspiration drawn from the book Geburtenrückgang by Korherr, in particular the idea that the only way to restore traditional sexual morals was through the alliance between the State and the Church working against the voluntary restriction of births and women's emancipation. Mussolini needed the Catholic Church to carry out the spiritual transformation necessary for his demographic and eugenic ambitions. The Italian interpretation of eugenics aimed at demographic growth and was based on the restoration of patriarchal values and on the traditional moral understanding of the essential link between sexuality and reproduction. For Catholics the regulation of public morality was so important that they found a relevant reason to support the government, its demographic policies and its social medicine, leaving political incompatibilities in the background. As a result, the fight against the ‘contraceptive mentality’ was one of the most important and undervalued components of Catholic alignment with Fascism.
The strategic alliance between the Fascist government and the Catholic Church was an area of active collaboration. The government put in place policies to safeguard traditional morality and Catholic discourse offered the necessary ideological support to the battle for natality. As the demographic programme unfolded, Fascist authorities set up a series of initiatives, including the establishment of a National Organisation for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy, as a moral institution; the ‘special committee for the analysis of the administrative and social police resources necessary to protect the family against multiple dangers’; as well as the approval of the Consolidated Law on Public Security, which targeted the spread of writings and images against ‘morality and public morals’ and writings that ‘illustrated means suited to the prevention of conception’. In particular, Section X of the penal code prohibited abortion, birth control, temporary and permanent sterilisation. Catholic authorities acclaimed the government's efforts. To ‘tame the growing danger’, Pope Pius XI published the encyclical Casti connubii, which condemned negative eugenics, birth control, abortion and women's emancipation (Pozzi Reference Pozzi2014). This document, along with the collaboration between the Catholic Church and the Fascist government, acquired their meaning in antithesis to the liberalisation of birth control, divorce, abortion in northern Europe, especially Germany, and North America. This context had implications for the Vatican's attitudes towards the socially conservative policies of other authoritarian regimes. In numerous documents the reference to the collaboration between civil and ecclesiastical authorities was explicit, acknowledged even by physicians. As we have seen, this collaboration also meant exchanging diplomatic dispatches on immorality and the birth control movement.
The message that Catholic and Fascist rhetoric conveyed was that secular scientific views of sexuality, which made it possible to think about the separation between sexuality and reproduction, were dangerous, treacherous, materialist, immoral and pseudoscientific. This is the reason why this rhetoric connected the birth control campaign with the derogatory term ‘neo-Malthusian’, which referred to the tradition of thought that proposed contraception as a solution for overpopulation. The sources pointed to the association between Nordic eugenics, Anglo-Saxon sexology and the feminist commitment to the birth control movement. Since mothers were believed to have a pivotal influence on the regeneration of the race, the feminist claims on women's right to voluntary motherhood and sexuality represented a political and cultural threat to Fascist demography and Catholic morals. The Fascist government and the Catholic Church found a solid cultural agreement around restoring traditional mores, patriarchal values, and gender hierarchy.
Acknowledgements
This article was made possible through support from a postdoctoral fellowship of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (The University of Queensland) and funds from the UQ Early Career Researcher Grant 2019 (The University of Queensland). I am indebted to Peter Cryle for his generous support and his precious suggestions. I would like to thank my colleagues for their comments on a paper I presented in Belfast at the 2018 European Social Science History Conference. This essay is the result of that discussion.
Notes on contributor
Lucia Pozzi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2017–2020) in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland (Australia). Her PhD research, under the supervision of Claude Langlois, EPHE of Sorbonne University (France), was focused on the history of the encyclical Casti connubii, which played a fundamental role in shaping Italian ideas about conjugal sexuality and gender roles. In 2014 she was awarded a grant by the Friends of University of Wisconsin Madison Libraries (USA). Between 2008 and 2012 she was a doctoral fellow at the Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose in Bologna (Italy). Her book Catholicism and Sexual Knowledge in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries is forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan (Series: Genders and Sexualities in History).
