Beyond Narratives of Conflict. Modern Medicine, Reproduction and Catholicism in Contemporary Historiography

Over the last two decades, the topic of Western biomedicine and religion has gained firm ground among historians. While taking distance from both confessional approaches and interpretations of the past that were implicitly informed by a narrative of conflict between medicine and religion, historians have recently integrated phenomena of separate coexistence and examples of mutual influence and collaboration in their work. In this article, we discuss the state of the art and the future agenda of the historiography of Catholicism and biomedicine in Europe and the United States, with a special interest in questions of reproduction. We thereby take into account the different levels on which this encounter has been studied: from the Vatican’s prescriptions to the collective reproductive behavior of Catholic populations, from the negotiations of medical professionals such as Catholic doctors and nurses to individual bodily experiences of the faithful.