558Chapter 28allowed the consumption of narcotic drugs during the
prewar Belle Époque, joined in an international conven-
tion against drugs in 1925.
More countries rewrote their laws on sexuality and
reproduction, marriage and divorce. Pope Pius XI stated
strict standards for Catholics in 1930, in the encyclical
Casti connubi(see document 28.1). He opposed birth
control, abortion, and divorce; birth control, for
example, was branded “criminal abuse” and “intrinsically
vicious.” Many governments, motivated by population
losses as much as by morality, outlawed birth control or
abortion. The French banned both (and information
about them) in 1920. Madeleine Pelletier, the prewar
feminist who had championed women’s right to have
abortions, was jailed in an asylum under these laws and
died there. Ireland made it a felony to sell, import, or
advertise any birth control device. Mussolini criminal-
ized abortion in 1930, although Italian women still ob-
tained 500,000 illegal abortions annually. Britain was an
unusual exception where an abortion law of 1929 al-
lowed the operation until the twenty-eighth week of
pregnancy. Few European governments followed Pius’s
urging to outlaw divorce, which was still a relatively
uncommon phenomenon. British courts, for example,
granted a total of 3,747 divorces in 1920. However the
details varied, the postwar mood of moral reform was
larger than a Christian religious revival. At the Islamic
southeastern edge of Europe, Atatürk reformed Turkish
marital law and outlawed polygamy.
Casti connubialso restated traditional views of the po-
sition of women. It instructed Catholics to accept “the
primacy of the husband” and “the ready subjection of
the wife” who must obey him. Many governments saw
an economic benefit in this. War work by millions of
women had encouraged feminists to believe that women
would soon win equality in jobs and wages. They did
not. Fewer Frenchwomen were working in 1921 than
had been in 1906, despite the loss of 1.4 million male
workers in the war. In Britain, 750,000 women lost their
jobs in the first year of peace; by 1923 women were aDOCUMENT 28.1
Pope Pius XI: Marriage, Birth Control, Abortion, and Divorce
Pius XI (served 1922–39) was a conservative pope. His encyclical
Casti connubi(1930), from which the following excerpts are taken,
gave the first comprehensive statement of the church’s position of many
issues concerning the family.Domestic... order includes both the primacy of the hus-
band with regard to the wife and children, the ready sub-
jection of the wife and her willing obedience, which the
Apostle commends in these words: “Let women be subject
to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is
the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church.”
This subjection, however, does not deny or take away the
liberty which fully belongs to the woman....
First consideration is due to the offspring, which
many have the boldness to [avoid]... by frustrating the
marriage act.... But no reason, however grave, may be
put forward by which anything intrinsically against nature
may become conformable to nature and morally good.
Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by
nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercis-
ing it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose
sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful
and intrinsically vicious....Another very grave crime is to be noted, Venerable
Brethren, which regards the taking of the life of the off-
spring hidden in the mother’s womb. Some wish it to be
allowed and left to the will of the father or the mother;
others... ask that the public authorities provide aid for
these death-dealing operations.... Venerable Brethren,
however much we may pity the mother whose health or
even life is gravely imperiled in the performance of a duty
allotted to her by nature, nevertheless what could ever be
a sufficient reason for excusing in any way the direct mur-
der of the innocent?
The advocates of the neo-paganism of today... con-
tinue by legislation to attack the indissolubility of the
marriage bond, proclaiming the lawfulness of divorce....
Opposed to all these reckless opinions, Venerable
Brethren, stands the unalterable law of God, fully con-
firmed by Christ, a law that can never be deprived of its
force by the decrees of men, the ideas of a people, or the
will of any legislator: “What God hath joined together, let
no man put asunder.”...
Pius Xi, “Casi Connubi.” In Anne Fremantle, The Papal Encyclicals.New
York: Putnam, 1956.