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Adam R. Shapiro, An Image of God: The Catholic Struggle with Eugenics, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 70, Issue 2, April 2015, Pages 329–331, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jru021
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It is common to condemn eugenics these days. Policies such as the forced sterilization of the “feebleminded” appear so repugnant to contemporary morals that it is hard to see eugenicists as anything but unethical utilitarians gone mad. Today, there are many religious and political groups that invoke the legacy of eugenics as a toxic critique of science, modernism, or progressivism. So it is a useful reminder that during the heyday of the American eugenics movement in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, many of these same parties were silent on the matter, and it was Catholics who not only condemned such policies, but who actively organized against them.
How American Catholics came to the positions they took on questions of eugenics is a complicated story, one that Sharon M. Leon describes in An Image of God. Leon observes that Catholics initially had a mixed reaction to eugenics—often endorsing the “positive” aspects of promoting good breeding while remaining wary of the most extreme forms of negative eugenics. In the early days, eugenicists even reached out to Catholic communities and sought the approval of priests and other influential members of the Catholic public. However, the case of Carrie Buck, who was involuntarily sterilized by the State of Virginia following a 1927 Supreme Court ruling, contributed to increased Catholic opposition to state eugenic laws. This became even more unequivocal after Pope Pius XI issued the 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii, which condemned sterilization and birth control, but also emphasized the sacred primacy of the family over the State. As opposition became stronger, Leon observes, American Catholics began to develop the organizational framework for influencing state and federal legislation in ways that remain politically strong today.
