Reviewed by: The Structure of Theological Revolutions: How the Fight Over Birth Control Transformed American Catholicism by Mark S. Massa SJ. Rodger Van Allen The Structure of Theological Revolutions: How the Fight Over Birth Control Transformed American Catholicism. By Mark S. Massa, SJ. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 232 pp. $29.95. The Structure of Theological Revolutions: How the Fight Over Birth Control Transformed American Catholicism. By Mark S. Massa, SJ. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 232 pp. $29.95. I Mark S. Massa, SJ, Professor of Church History and Director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, has pursued the birth control issue in two excellent chapters of The American Catholic Revolution: How the Sixties Changed the Church Forever (2010). The title to the volume that is the subject of this review is How the Fight Over Birth Control Transformed American Catholicism, but the focus is mostly on how and why theology changes, and in particular how theories of natural law have changed since what Massa calls "the end of the Catholic Nineteenth Century in 1968" when the natural law argumentation of Humane Vitae was found inadequate by both supporters and dissenters to the encyclical. The title Structure of Theological Revolutions, quite consciously riffs the title of scientist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn argued that science had not progressed in a linear developmental fashion. The history of science was in fact one of discontinuity, rupture, and paradigm shift. Massa's book, as he states "rests on the conviction that what Kuhn was arguing about with regard to the macro-tradition of physical science are replicated in both macro-and micro-traditions outside of science as well, in this case the new micro tradition of natural law." [End Page 67] Massa limits his major discussion to Catholic debates about natural law in the United States since Vatican II. He acknowledges, however, critical discussions of neo-scholasticism and natural law by Josef Fuchs, Bernard Haring, and others in the years preceding Vatican II. Humanae Vitae is more the occasion than the focal point of this book, and is presented as the moment when "the unquestioned dominance of the specific type of natural law discourse (neo-scholasticism) that had defined Catholic moral theology for generations came to a climatic end." Four meaty chapters deal with what Massa argues are new suggested paradigms: Charles Curran and Loyal Dissent: The First Postclassicist Natural Law Paradigm; Germain Grisez and the New Natural Law; Jean Porter and the Historical Project of Robust Realism; and Lisa Sowle Cahill and the Search for a Functionalist Paradigm of Feminist Global Ethics. Each of these thinkers is presented with clarity, insight, and appreciation. Indeed, I believe each one was called brilliant. In his conclusion, Massa acknowledges as foundational "the magisterial studies of the development of Catholic theology and doctrine already done by John Henry Newman (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine) and John Noonan (A Church that Can and Cannot Change). He takes issue, however, with those who serenely translate such works in ways that make development synonymous with linear growth or organic extrapolation. Behind the word "linear" lay a great deal of rupture and discontinuity. Indeed, he maintains the micro-tradition of natural law is so marked by disjunction and rupture that the phrase "paradigm revolution" seems warranted. Massa's book is brilliant; a combination of verve and wit, good scholarship, and rigorous argumentation. Even those who may ultimately feel he is pushing the analogy of scientific and theological revolution too hard, will find this book thoroughly stimulating and constructive. Massa acknowledges that assessments of "paradigm revolution" are questions of calibration and perception. Revolution, he grants, is in the eye of the beholder. This book is suitable for advanced undergraduates and grad students, and should be in every university library. One final thought: Massa's book does not suggest that the birth control controversy was simply a battle about natural law. Readers' uninitiated to the debate, however, could possibly infer that it was. The birth control debate was ultimately about ecclesiology, and specifically about whether the Roman Catholic church could admit an earlier...