A01=Francesco Torchiani
Author_Francesco Torchiani
Category=JBSJ
Category=NHB
Category=QRMB1
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Product details
- ISBN 9780299356804
- Weight: 400g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 21 Apr 2026
- Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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).
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).
