"Hopelessly entangled in nordic pre-suppositions": Catholic participation in the American Eugenics Society In the 1920s

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Volumn 59, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 3-49

  Leon, Sharon M ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

American Eugenics Society; Casti Connubii; Catholicism; Committee on Cooperation with Clergymen; Eugenics; John A. Ryan; John Montgomery Cooper; Leon Whitney; Paul Popenoe

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CONTRACEPTION; GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION; HEALTH CARE POLICY; HISTORY; HUMAN; MEDICAL GENETICS; MIGRATION; POLICY; PUBLIC RELATIONS; RELIGION; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; UNITED STATES;

GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION;

CATHOLICISM; EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION; EUGENICS; HEALTH POLICY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; INTERINSTITUTIONAL RELATIONS; PREJUDICE; PUBLIC POLICY; STERILIZATION, INVOLUNTARY; UNITED STATES;

EID: 85047690194     PISSN: 00225045     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrg041     Document Type: Review

References (134)

1. For historical surveys of eugenics in the United States, see Mark Haller, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1963);
2. Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995);
3. and Diane B. Paul, Controlling Human Heredity, 1865 to the Present (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 1998).
4. Barry Mehler, "A History of the American Eugenics Society, 1921-1940." (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1988), p. 110.
5. The resistance of Catholics in a number of states and at the national level through the various organizations associated with the NCWC is discussed fully in Sharon M. Leon, "Before Casti connubii: Early Catholic Responses to the Eugenics Movement in the United States," Working Papers Series, The Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, 2000, 32, 1-41.
6. Nancy Leys Stepan and Sander L. Gilman, "Appropriating the Idioms of Science: The Rejection of Scientific Racism," in The Bounds of Race: Perspectives on Hegemony and Resistance, ed. Dominick LaCapra (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 73-103, p. 94.
7. Mehler, "American Eugenics Society, 1921-1940," pp. 34-37, 61, 67-68. Eugenics drew a significantly larger radical following in England than it did in the United States. For more on liberal eugenicists,
8. see Diane B. Paul, "Eugenics and the Left," J. Hist. Ideas, 1984, 45, 567-90.
9. Eugenics Committee Minutes (26 October 1923), American Eugenics Society Papers (henceforth AES Papers), American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (henceforth APS).
10. For a summary of the composition of the CCC, see Christine Alison Stolba, "'A Corrupt Tree Bringeth Forth Evil Fruit': Religion and the American Eugenics Movement" (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1999), pp. 230-35.
11. Religious Bodies: 1926, Volume II, Separate Denominations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1929), pp. 1255-1257.
12. This geographic convergence is significant given Elazar Barkan's comments in his discussion of scientific racism: "The core of the discipline [study of race] was determined largely by geographical proximity to major academic centers. Distance and lack of communication continuously frustrated close interaction. Geography in and of itself was important; New York was the center of racial discourse in the United States. California was too far away form the center for even the most prominent of its scientists to participate in the national scientific-intellectual discourse on race." Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 9.
13. Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), pp. 191-92.
14. A most helpful discussion of the chilling effect in the sciences of the condemnation of modernism is found in R. Scott Appleby, "Exposing Darwin's 'Hidden Agenda': Roman Catholic Responses to Evolution, 1875-1925," in Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender, ed. Ronald L. Numbers and John Stenhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 173-208.
15. John A. Ryan, A Living Wage: Its Ethical and Economic Aspects (New York: Macmillan, 1906).
16. Francis L. Broderick, Right Reverend New Dealer: John A. Ryan (New York: Macmillan, 1963), pp. 27-47.
17. John A. Ryan, "Bishops' Program of Social Reconstruction," issued 12 February 1919 by the Administrative Committee of the National Catholic War Council,
18. reprinted in John Tracy Ellis, ed., Documents of American Catholic History, 2 vols. (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1987) II, pp. 589-607, p. 607.
19. On Ryan and Progressivism, see Joseph M. McShane, S.J., "Sufficiently Radical": Catholicism, Progressivism, and the Bishops' Program of 1919 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1986).
20. Douglas Slawson, The Foundation and First Decade of the National Catholic Welfare Council (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1992), pp. 62-69.
21. On the National Catholic War Council, see Elizabeth McKeown, War and Welfare: American Catholics and World War I (New York: Garland, 1988).
22. Slawson, The Foundation and First Decade, pp. 72-79.
23. John A. Ryan, Human Sterilization (Washington, D.C.: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1927),
24. John A. Ryan, idem., Moral Aspects of Sterilization (Washington, D.C.: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1930).
25. For more on the planning of the pamphlet series, see Leon, "Before Casti connubii."
26. Elizabeth McKeown, "From Pascendi to Primitive Man: The Apologetics and Anthropology of John Montgomery Cooper," U.S. Catholic Historian, 1995, 13:2, 1-22.
27. Paul Bowman Popenoe, Modern Marriage: A Handbook (New York: Macmillan, 1925);
28. Paul Bowman Popenoe, idem., Conservation of the Family (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1926);
29. Paul Bowman Popenoe, idem. and Roswell Johnson, Applied Eugenics (New York: Macmillan, rev. ed. 1933).
30. On Popenoe's career in eugenics, see Molly Ladd-Taylor, "Eugenics, Sterilisation and Modern Marriage in the USA: The Strange Career of Paul Popenoe," Gender & History, 2001, 13, 298-327,
31. and Sharon M. Leon, "Promoting Wise Marriages: Paul Popenoe, Eugenics and Marriage Guides for Men in the 1920s," paper presented at the American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, 29 October 1999.
32. See the Cooper-Popenoe correspondence in the John Montgomery Cooper Papers (henceforth Cooper Papers), Archives of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. (henceforth ACUA). The exchange of letters began when the two worked together in 1920 for the American Social Hygiene Association and continued through 1926, addressing marriage, birth control, divorce, evolution, and sterilization. In addition to these friendly discussions, Cooper responded favorably to Popenoe's manuscript for Conservation of the Family, calling the text "a remarkably fine arid original and fresh approach to a subject calling for the most resourceful and balanced thinking" (Cooper to Popenoe, 24 July 1925).
33. John Montgomery Cooper, Religion Outlines for Colleges, 4 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1924-1930), I-IV.
34. Cooper, Religion Outlines for Colleges: Course I, The Catholic Ideal of Life, 2nd rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Education Press, 1937), p. 154.
35. Cooper, Religion Outlines for Colleges: Course IV, Life Problems (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Education Press, 1928), pp. 61-93, p. 68.
36. For a treatment of the popular and educational efforts of the eugenics movement, see Steven Selden, Inheriting Shame; The Story of Eugenics and Racism in America (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), pp. 39-83.
37. "Prizes for Sermons on Eugenics," Eugenical News, 1926, 11:3, 48,
38. and "Sermons on Eugenics," Eugenical News, 1926, 11:4, 56.
39. Phillips E. Osgood, "The Refiner's Fire," Eugenics, 1928, 1:3, 10-15.
40. Ibid., p. 11.
41. Minutes of the Board of Directors of the American Eugenics Society, 16 November 1929, AES Papers.
42. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience, pp. 245, 392.
43. See Ryan, Human Sterilization.
44. "Sermon #3," Sermon Contest, 1926, AES Papers.
45. "Refusal, Seton Hall College," Eugenics, 1930, 3:4, 155.
46. See for example "A New Issue," Catholic Universe Bulletin (6 May 1927), p. 16;
47. "Unjustified Sterilization," America (14 May 1927), p. 102;
48. and Francis S. Betten, S.J., "Sterilization Banned by Natural Law, Says Jesuit," Catholic Universe Bulletin (20 May 1927), p. 8.
49. Charles B. Davenport Papers, APS, and "How Probation Works," Eugenical News, 1929, 12, 132.
50. Harry F. Ward, "Is Christian Morality Harmful? Over-Charitable to the Unfit?" Eugenics, 1928, 1:3, 20-21, p. 20.
51. John A. Ryan, "Is Christian Morality Harmful?", p. 21.
52. For more on Catholic social provision, see Dorothy M. Brown and Elizabeth McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us: Catholic Charities and American Welfare (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).
53. Richard R. Gaillardetz, "John A. Ryan: An Early Revisionist," J. Rel. Ethics, 1990, 18, 110-17.
54. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, p. 74.
55. Dealing with tremendous diversity due to the immigration of the nineteenth century, Catholic bishops allowed the establishment of national parishes that recognized the authenticity of distinct and traditional styles of worship and that worked to preserve the ethnicity of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Instead of forcing new immigrants to adopt the worship styles and culture of the predominantly Irish and German hierarchy, the existence of national parishes allowed them to participate in the life of the church without compromising their ethnic heritage. This is riot to say that there were not serious instances of conflict among ethnic groups in Catholic urban centers, but the establishment of national parishes theoretically accommodated difference more than they discouraged it. This accommodation of difference was possible only because regardless of ethnic or racial background, the individuals who populated those congregations shared a common commitment to the core elements of the Catholic faith and were united by a sacramental theology that centered on the Eucharist. This unity through faith and ritual extended not only to the new immigrants, but also to the small numbers of professing African American Catholics. However, just as with all other Euro-Americans, Catholics participated in varying degrees in the oppression of African Americans, from the slaveholding practices of the Maryland Jesuits in the seventeenth century to the battles over neighborhood desegregation in the twentieth century. The key texts on these complicated issues are as follows: R. Emmett Curran, "Splendid Poverty: Jesuit Slave-Holding in Maryland, 1805-1838," in Randall Miller and Jon Waklyn, eds., Catholics in the Old South: Essays in Church and Culture (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1983), pp. 125-46;
56. Cyprian Davis, The History of Black Catholics in the United States (New York: Crossroads, 1990);
57. John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996);
58. and David W. Southern, John LaFarge and the Limits of Catholic Interracialism, 1911-1963 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996).
59. Reginald G. Harris, "Eugenics in South America," Eugenical News, 1922, 7:3, 29-30.
60. While Harris's article referred to the ways that South Americans understood skin color and racial hierarchy, the work of Nancy Leys Stepan demonstrates that within Latin America, a softer eugenics prevailed that than which took hold in the United States, England, and Northern Europe. She attributes this difference both to cultural ties with France, where neo-Lamarckian thought held some sway, and to religious (Catholic) objections to human sterilization. See Stepan, "The Hour of Eugenics": Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).
61. "White America," Eugenical News, 1924, 9, 3. A copy of the review is also located in the Davenport Papers.
62. "A Free Hand in the Philippines," Eugenical News, 1930, 15:5, 70.
63. John Montgomery Cooper,"Is Eugenics Racial Snobbery?" Eugenics, 1929, 2:2, 20-21, p. 20.
64. On anti-Catholic nativism and xenophobia, see John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 [1955] (New York: Atheneum, 1975)
65. and Donald L. Kinzer, An Episode in Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Association (Seattle: University of Washington, 1964).
66. Ives to Ryan, 13 May 1929; Ryan to Ives, 18 May 1929; Ives to Ryan, 20 May 1929; Ryan to Ives, 23 May 1929, John A. Ryan Papers (henceforth Ryan Papers), ACUA. The symposium appeared as "Personal Factors in Immigration: Should They Get More Attention?" Eugenics, 1929, 2:7, 18-20.
67. Ives to Ryan, 9 December 1929, and Ryan to Ives, 17 December 1929, Ryan Papers.
68. Whitney to Cooper, 8 September 1930, Cooper Papers.
69. Cooper to Whitney, 19 September 1930, Cooper Papers.
70. Whitney to Cooper, 23 August 1929, and Cooper to Whitney, 27 August 1929, Cooper Papers.
71. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 129-75;
72. Herbert Spencer Jennings, "Undesirable Aliens," Survey, 1923, 51, 309-12, 364;
73. and Raymond Pearl, "The Biology of Superiority," Am. Mercury, 1927, 12, 260.
74. "The New Conquest of California," Eugenical News, 1928, 13, 31.
75. For more on "race suicide," see Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), pp. 143-67;
76. Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: Birth Control in America (New York: Penguin, 1990), pp. 137-41;
77. Miriam King and Steven Ruggles, "American Immigration, Fertility, and Race Suicide at the Turn of the Century," J. Interdisciplinary Hist., 1990, 20, 347-69;
78. Elaine Tyler May, Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 61-95.
79. For more on momism, see Paula J. Caplan, "Mother-Blaming," and Jennifer Terry " 'Momism' and the Making of Treasonous Homosexuals," in Molly Ladd-Taylor and Lauri Umansky, eds., "Bad" Mothers: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America (New York: New York University Press, 1998), pp. 127-44, 169-90.
80. Edwin Grant Conklin,"Feminism and the 'New Woman': Their Eugenical Significances," Eugenics, 1930, 3:8, 302-4, p. 304.
81. I b i d.
82. On feminism and social motherhood, see Peter Filene, Him /Her'/Self: Gender Identities in Modern America, 3rd ed. (Baltimore. Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 42-59.
83. For a specific treatment of pronatalism and eugenics see May, Barren in the Promised Land, pp. 61-95.
84. Cooper,"Feminism and the 'New Woman,'" 302-4.
85. The book emerged out of a twelve-part series by Charles Bruehl, D.D., in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, June 1926 through May 1927 (vols. 26, 27).
86. Thomas J. Gerrard, "Eugenics and Catholic Teaching," Catholic World, 1912, 95, 289-304;
87. John A. Ryan, "The Church and Birth Control," in Family Limitation and The Church and Birth Control (New York: Paulist Press, 1916), pp. 17-23;
88. and Henry Somerville, "Eugenics and the Feeble-minded," Catholic World, 1917, 105, 209-18.
89. Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization [1922] (London: J. Cape, 1923), p. 40.
90. Daniel Kevles aptly explains this transition: "Stripped of its assertive feminism, contraception became acceptable to conservative eugenicists, for there was natural harmony between their social predilections and the pro-birth-control rational advanced by Havelock Ellis: 'The superficially sympathetic man flings a coin to the beggar; the more deeply sympathetic man builds and almshouse for him so that he need no longer beg; but perhaps the most radically sympathetic of all is the man who arranges that the beggar shall not be born.'" Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, pp. 88-90, p. 90.
91. The ongoing controversy between Catholics and birth controllers from 1914 through the 1960s has been well documented. For example see Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (New York: Anchor Books, 1992).
92. Taking this perspective, Bruehl participated in the revival of scholasticism that Pope Leo XIII called for among Catholics in his 1879 encyclical Aeterni patris. Based on the work of thirteenth-century theologians and philosophers, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, and St. Bonaventure, neoscholasticism maintained that truth could be arrived at only through a synthesis of revealed truth and reason, of faith and reason. The result was a completely comprehensive philosophical system that professed to contain and explain all of the elements of the human condition, uniting the natural and the supernatural in to one unified whole. Neoscholastics used natural law to analyze the conditions of modern industrial society and to provide moral guidance in dealing with those conditions. For a summary see "Scholasticism" New Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XII (Qat-Scr) (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1967), pp. 1153-70.
93. On the impact of neoscholasticism in the United States, see Philip Gleason, "The Search for Unity and Its Sequel," in Keeping the Faith: American Catholicism, Past and Present (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), pp. 136-51.
94. Samuel J. Holmes, "The Catholic View," Eugenics, 1928, 1:2, 37-38.
95. Ibid., 38.
96. C. C. Little, Margaret Sanger, and Hannah M. Stone,"The Reproduction Rate of Genius: Will Birth Control Diminish It?" Eugenics, 1929, 2:3, 22-24.
97. Ives to Cooper, 27 March 1929, Cooper Papers.
98. "News and Notes," Eugenical News, 1925, 10:3, 36.
99. Whitney to Cooper, 7 March 1929; Cooper to Whitney, 12 March 1929; Whitney to Cooper, 10 June 1930; Cooper to Whitney, 12 June 1930; Whitney to Cooper, 16 June 1930; Popenoe to Cooper, 23 October 1923; Popenoe to Cooper, 25 July 1925; Whitney to Cooper, 16 January 1925; Cooper to Whitney, 20 January 1925; Whitney to Cooper, 23 March 1925; and Whitney to Cooper, 7 May 1925, Cooper Papers.
100. Cooper to Ives, 1 April 1929, Cooper Papers.
101. Cooper, "The Birth Rate of Genius: Does Contraception Curb It?" Eugenics, 1929, 2:5, 18.
102. Edward M. East, "The Birth Rate of Genius: Does Contraception Curb It?" Eugenics, 1929, 2:5, 19.
103. Richard Dyer, White (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 20.
104. Austin O'Malley, "Vasectomy in Defectives," Am. Ecclesiastical Rev., 1911, 44, 684-705;
105. "The Morality and the Lawfulness of Vasectomy," Am. Ecclesiastical Rev., 1911, 45, 71-77;
106. Steven [Samuel] M. Donovan, "Summing up the Discussion on Vasectomy," Am. Ecclesiastical Rev., 1911, 45, 313-19;
107. Theodore Labouré, "One Last Remark on Vasectomy," Am. Ecclesiastical Rev., 1911, 45, 355-59;
108. "P. Schmitt on the Gravity of the Mutilation Involved in Vasectomy," Am. Ecclesiastical Rev., 1911, 45, 360-62.
109. Whitney to Cooper, 27 March 1930, Cooper Papers.
110. I b i d.
111. Cooper to Whitney, 8 April 1930, Cooper Papers.
112. For English-language accounts of Mayer's thought on eugenics, sterilization, and euthanasia, see Donald J. Dietrich, "Catholic Eugenics in Germany, 1920-1945: Hermann Muckermann, S.J. and Joseph Mayer,"J. Church and State, 1992, 34, 575-600,
113. and Robert Graham, "The 'Right to Kill' in the Third Reich: Prelude to Genocide," Catholic Historical Rev., 1976, 62, 56-76.
114. Paul Popenoe, "A Roman Catholic View of Sterilization," J. Social Hygiene, 1928, 14,
115. reprinted in E. S. Gosney and Paul Popenoe, eds. Sterilization for Human Betterment (New York: Macmillan, 1929), pp. 186-91.
116. Popenoe's translation of Mayer's work is just one indication of the close ties between the proponents of the eugenics movement in the United States and their counterparts in Germany. Though negative eugenics policies were implemented in Europe, South America, and Asia, the most virulent manifestations of those policies arose in Germany and the United States. For nationally comparative work on eugenics see Mark B. Adams, ed., The Well-Born Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990);
117. Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen, eds., Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999);
118. and Stepan, "The Hour of Eugenics".
119. For more on the connection between the U.S. and German eugenics movements, see Stefan Kühl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
120. Joseph Mayer, "Eugenics in Roman Catholic Literature," Eugenics, 1930, 3:2, 44.
121. Ibid., 46.
122. Ibid., 47.
123. I b i d.
124. I b i d.
125. John A. Ryan, Human Sterilization (Washington, D.C.: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1927), pp. 2 and 9, p. 9.
126. Roswell Johnson worked at the University of Pittsburgh and was Popenoe's couthor on the most widely used eugenics textbook, Applied Eugenics.
127. Samuel M. Donovan, "Sterilization: Its Legality, Need; A Catholic and Some Eugenicists Speak," Eugenics, 1930, 3:5, 180-81.
128. Casti connubii, paragraph 71. "Casti connubii: Encyclical of Pope Pius XI, On Christian Marriage, December 31, 1930, 208"
129. in Claudia Carlen, ed., The Papal Encyclicals, 1903-1939 (Raleigh: Pierian Press, 1990), pp. 391-414, p. 402.
130. John T. Noonan, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists [1965] (New York: Mentor-Omega, New American Library, 1967), pp. 511-12.
131. Clipping of newspaper article, 18 April 1931, and Ryan to Whitney, 9 April 1931, Ryan Papers.
132. Whitney to Ryan, 17 April 1931, Ryan Papers.
133. Cooper to Whitney, 9 April 1931, Cooper Papers.
134. Whitney to Cooper, 21 April 1931, Cooper Papers.