‘Love-communion’: Catholicism, sexuality and pleasure in 1970s Mexico

This article examines how a Mexican couple envisioned an alternate Catholic approach to sexuality, called love-communion, at the Mujeres para el Diálogo (MPD), or Women in Dialogue conference in 1979 in Puebla, Mexico. Love-communion was based entirely on intimacy, de-emphasising the procreative purpose the Church had preached for centuries. Surprisingly, love-communion paid attention to questions of pleasure and same-sex couples. Such open debate, let alone a radical vision imagined by a married Catholic couple, would be unimaginable in just a few years, especially in the face of politicisation about sex in the 1980s. While scholarship has focused on how liberation theology was a key issue at Puebla in 1979, this article argues another issue was just as central: the question of sex. This article also challenges previous scholarship on feminist mobilisation, which has primarily remembered the conference as turning point for the organising of Catholic feminists, and on family planning, which has embraced the perspectives of Catholic actors, but has neglected the perspectives of Catholic women. Historicising and analysing one of the only sources about the 1979 MPD conference reveals a story of loss – what could have been if the Church had listened to its followers, such as this couple.

Duke Scholars

Author Natalie Gasparowicz International Comparative Studies