The production of Catholic sexual discourse: A Foucauldian analysis of the discursive power of the American laity since Vatican Council II

This dissertation uses Michel Foucault's theories of power, sex and discourse to explain how statements made at Vatican Council II inadvertently created a discursive space for the Catholic laity to claim moral subjectivity in the church's discourse on sexuality. In addition to applying Foucauldian techniques to official church statements, it uses the narratives of a representative cross-section of secondary teachers of morality from a large American archdiocese to illustrate how this lay power is used to resist unaccepted magisterial teachings and create competing Catholic discourses.;This research is significant for what it says about two aspects of the church's functioning: the real areas of division between the magisterium and American laity and the actual way moral power is exercised throughout the church. It demonstrates that the greatest tension between the laity and the hierarchy appears on the surface to be about sex/uality; but the more consequential issue is the underlying dispute over power and authority.;In consciously offering students a moral discourse that competes with that of the magisterium, these religion teachers give credence to Foucault's theory of the operation of power in the modern era. This is to say that, in spite of the church's appearance as a monolithic institution with highly centralized control over its doctrine, in reality the power to produce a discourse on sex/uality is diffused throughout the church from Rome to the local high school. In Foucault's terms, the teaching of dissent reveals the capillary nature of power, i.e. that power is never simply contained within the leadership of a social agency, but emanates from a variety of sources outside of legitimate, obvious centers of control.;The heart of these competing discourses is the teacher's rejection of the ancient doctrine of the faith. While the magisterium clings to this doctrine as a foundation for its teachings on sex, key statements of the council changed the doctrine enough to give the laity room to reject it.