A professor at The Catholic University of America (CUA) with a history of undermining the Catholic Church’s opposition to contraception has again spoken out publicly in an interview with Canada’s National Post, as disclosed by LifeSite News.

“Nothing was as devastating to the Church’s credibility as Humanae vitae and the paralysis it generated,” Tentler is quoted in the July 12 issue of the National Post. “It makes for dishonesty at the heart of the system. Do ordinary Catholics believe it’s a mortal sin? No, they do not. Do they believe their leaders think it’s a mortal sin? No, they do not. Yet we keep pretending.”

Tentler, a tenured history professor at CUA, is author of Catholics and Contraception: An American History (Cornell University Press, 2004). In that book, and in multiple lectures, papers and articles, Tentler has developed the argument that many problems in the Church—including doctrinal confusion and distrust among the laity toward bishops and priests—are significantly the result of teachings on contraception that most Catholics simply cannot accept.

A graduate of the University of Michigan and professor there for 25 years before coming to CUA in 1998, Professor Tentler fashions herself not just an historian, but an historian of the Catholic Church. Most of her writings and lectures concern modern Catholic history, and she serves on the editorial board of U.S. Catholic Historian, the journal of the U.S. Catholic Historical Society.

Tentler has been influential at CUA. In 2001, the university established its Center for American Catholic Studies and selected Tentler as director, a position she still holds. She has taught a variety of courses on Catholic history, feminism and even “Contemporary Christianity: Theology and Social Thought Since 1945.” A May 2002 article in the university publication Inside CUA celebrates Tentler’s work on subjects “from seminary life to birth control.” In September 2004, CUA chose Tentler to address the freshman convocation.