The Unspeakable Vice

The Catholic Church and Homosexuality in the Twentieth Century

Francesco Torchiani (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

216 Seiten

2026
University of Wisconsin Press (Verlag)
9780299356804 (ISBN)

Noch nicht erschienen (ca. April 2026)
Versandkostenfrei
Auch auf Rechnung

Artikel merken

As gay men and lesbian women increasingly gained recognition and acceptance in twentieth-century literature and film, and subsequently in social and political movements, the Catholic Church reacted by subtly moving away from its overt condemnation of homosexuality as an urgent moral problem and toward tacitly shunning homosexuality as an “unspeakable vice.” In this revealing history, Francesco Torchiani reconstructs the Catholic Church’s shifting attitudes toward homosexuality during this period by drawing on a vast array of internal documents and external accounts. This monograph expands the scholarship on the relationship between Catholicism and homosexuality in terms of both method and content, ultimately concluding that the Catholic Church continues to wholeheartedly condemn homosexuality despite making genuine efforts to reflect on and understand its social and cultural impact. The Unspeakable Vice therefore sheds new light on and places into historical perspective the questions the Catholic Church continues to reckon with regarding its role in contemporary society.

Francesco Torchiani is an associate professor of contemporary history in the Department of Humanities at the University of Pavia. He is the author of Gaetano Salvemini: Impegno intellettuale e lotta politica (Gaetano Salvemini: Intellectual Commitment and Political Struggle). Johanna Bishop’s book-length translations include Luca Cesari’s The Discovery of Pasta: A History in Ten Dishes; Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi’s Germans, Italians, and Jews: The Police Forces of Occupied Italy, 1943–1945; and Ilaria Pavan’s Beyond the Things Themselves: Economic Aspects of the Italian Race Laws (1938–2018).

Introduction

Part I: From Sodomy to Homosexuality
1. A Vice “Particularly Odious to God”
2. The Sin That “Cries for Vengeance”
3. After Kinsey
4. A Disease?

Part II: “Intrinsically Disordered” Acts
5. Judging for Oneself
6. Persona Humana
7. “Morally Wrong” Behavior
8. Christianity and Tolerance
9. The Iron Prefect
10. “God’s Punishment”?
11. An Impossible Right
12. Nonnegotiable Principles

Epilogue: Francis, a Turning Point?
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	7.4.2026
Reihe/Serie	George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas
Übersetzer	Johanna Bishop
Verlagsort	Wisconsin
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	454 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-13	9780299356804 / 9780299356804
Zustand	Neuware