"Catholics and Contraception examines the intimate dilemmas of pastoral counseling in matters of sexual conduct. Tentler makes clear that uneasy negotiations were always necessary between clerical and lay authority. As the Catholic Church found itself isolated in its strictures against contraception - and the object of damaging rhetoric in the public debate over legal birth control - support of the Church's teachings on contraception became and mark of Catholic identity, for better and for worse. Tentler draws on evidence from pastoral literature, sermons, lay writings, private correspondence, and interviews with fifty-six priests ordained between 1938 and 1968, concluding, "the recent history of American Catholicism... can only be understood by taking birth control into account.""--BOOK JACKET.