1 Voir entre autres : Patrick O’Malley, Catholicism, Sexual Deviance, and Victorian Gothic Culture, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 193 et sq. et Michael S. Foldy, The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality, and Late-Victorian Society, New Haven et Londres, Yales University Press, 1997, p. 8.

2 Même si quelques procès retentissants sont à signaler au xx^e siècle, notamment en 1921 et 1977.

3 House of Lords. « Bowman and others, appellants; and secular society, limited, respondents », Appeal Cases, 1917, p. 406. http://www.uniset.ca/other/cs5/1917AC406.html. Consulté le 19 avril 2018. « The common law of England […] knows no prosecution for mere opinion, […] provided such expression be kept within proper limits of order, reverence, and decency ».

4 Yvonne Sherwood, Biblical Blasphemy. Trials of the Sacred for a Secular Age, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 40.

5 Nous déduisons cette définition des paroles de Lord Talbot à l’occasion des débats parlementaires autour du Catholic Disabilities Bill. The Tablet, 22/05/1909.

6 Deborah Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal, Londres et New York, Routledge, 2012, p. 4.

7 Même si les femmes de la middle-class eurent dans les faits accès à une forme de vie publique par le biais de la philanthropie.

8 Richard L. Camp, « From Passive Subordination to Complementary Partnership: The Papal Conception of a Woman’s Place in Church and Society since 1878 », The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 76, n^o. 3, juillet 1990, p. 512.

9 Karen Offen, Les féminismes en Europe (1700-1950), Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012, p. 264.

10 Richard L. Camp, op. cit., p. 512.

11 Peter G. Filene, Him/Her/Self. Gender Identities in America, Baltimore et Londres, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988 [1974], p. 220.

12 Voir Duncan Gallie, Social Inequality and Class Radicalism in France and Britain, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983, 339 p.

13 Lettre pastorale de l’évêque de Limerick, The Tablet, 2 mars 1912. « But it is the total change that it would work in their whole domestic and social position. From the peace of their homes they would be drawn into the angry, and often squalid, strife of political parties. Now they stand outside all such contentions. A man comes home from some turbulent scenes of an election contest, and finds in his home, under the influence of a good woman, the calm and quietness that are the one need of his soul at the time. But how would it be if his wife was an active participator in the same contest, and in his home, in which he might look for some cessation of strife, be found the same or even greater bitterness? Are we to contemplate the possibility of husband and wife taking opposite sides, and the peace and harmony of their family life disturbed, and their children divided into opposite camps with their parents? The very thought is shocking to every sense of Christian propriety. Are women to attend public meetings, join clubs and leagues and other such bodies, and, just as men do now, take an active interest in all political developments? It is not easy to see how such a life is consistent with the care of home and children and regard for the great and important interests that now depend entirely on the woman of the house. […] The husband by God’s ordinance is the head of the family, and in all its external relations its representative. He speaks and votes and acts for wife and child, and it is nothing less than a reversal of the order that God has established to deprive him of that office and set up his own wife to divide it with him and, it may be, oppose his action. If the wife is to vote and act with the husband, what is the gain of giving her the franchise? If she is to be free to vote and act against him, then the franchise for her is the readiest way to break up the peace of her family, destroy her own legitimate influence, and with it banish religion from the home ».

14 Leonora de Alberti, Woman Suffrage and Pious Opponents, Londres, The Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society, p. 1 et 2. « Of all types of anti-suffragists, the most trying, because so-well meaning, is the pious opponent, the woman who honestly think that her citizenship and degradation are closely allied » ; « The woman who thinks she is making herself unwomanly by voting is a silly creature ».

15 Propos du P. Day rapporté par divers journaux du nord de l’Angleterre, et notamment : « The Church and Suffragism », Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 18 novembre 1912. « Has the Church any doctrine to offer concerning suffragism or votes for women? Directly and expressly, no. Indirectly and interpretatiely, yes. As far as suffragism is a purely political question, involving no moral issue, the Church holds aloof from its discussion. But when the question trespasses on moral ground, and threaten to impugn sacred principles which are the base of society and of the Church, she casts off her indifference and inaction, and is instant in proclaiming her warnings ».

16 The Catholic Herald, 27 novembre 1912. « Against this domestic order appointed alike by nature and God, advanced Feminists and Suffragists rebel. […] The answer to this is that the feminist theory is not only opposed to religious teaching and to conventional ideas of propriety, but that it contradicts the very teaching of nature, and subverts primary and established principles of right human conduct. Feminist doctrine is unnatural; it is anti-social, anti-racial, and, most of all, degrading to woman ».

17 « The Church and Suffragism », Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 18 novembre 1912. « The vindictive attacks recently made by suffragists on persons and property were […] criminal and sinful. They are a degradation to women, an outrage against society, and a serious offence against God. The role of the militant suffragist is a new role for woman in the drama of life. Specially invented by Satan. It ill becomes her. Neither God nor nature ever intended woman to act such a part ».

18 Manchester Guardian, 21 octobre 1912.

19 Manchester Guardian, 6 novembre 1912. « I write to say that as long as the general public undestsands, what every Catholic knows, that these are Father Days' personal views no harm is done. There is a type of priest who invariably says that the Church teaches his own particular interpretation of theology and private opinion. […] Father Day, in common with so many anti-Suffragists, confuses the physical laws of nature with the laws which govern human nature – a very different thing, and which vary in progress even in place as well as in time ».

20 The Universe and Catholic Weekly, 29 juin 1912. « But the world is crying out for the beneficent influence of woman’s spirituality on the gross materialism fostered by men at the present day. Men have manipulated the codes at will, setting up, less in accordance with their intelligence than their baser instincts, standards of conduct that are rejected by the majority of women. Morality is ebbing, as might be expected, with the religious sense, and with the tendency to avoid all restraint. Incitements to laxity, and even to rank perjury, threaten to obliterate Christian civilization ».

21 Ibidem. « Moral issues are more vital to a nation than territorial aggrandizement or material comforts, and women have ever been the best guardians of moral principle. Men have acquiesced in this notion, to the extent of relegating woman and morality to a circumscribed home, from which they are dissociating themselves more and more as the evils of a perverted civilization become more accessible and more alluring ».

22 Ibidem. « However laudable the conception the conception of a pair of embroidered slippers for her lord, or the confection of puff-paste filled for his delectation with her own subtle jam, or the donning of a ravishing creation of silk and lace to bewilder and charm, intelligent companionship and fuller participation in man’s true life is better for both, and more conducive to the development of the next generation. Common sense and woman’s resourcefulness are worthier then applied to universal problems than to the moulding of pies and the study of personal adornment ».

23 Dans le manifeste de la Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League, The Spectator, 25 juillet 1908.

24 Christian Womanhood dans Catholic Social Guild Pamphlets, Londres, 1914, p. 1.

25 George Bernard Shaw, Fanny’s First Play, Fairfield, Ist World Library - Literary Society, 2004, p. 101.

26 Leonora de Alberti, « History of the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society », Catholic Citizen, 15 décembre 1928, p. 106.

27 Nicolas Balzamo, « La liberté du présent ou l’histoire aux prises avec le blasphème », ASSR, n° 180, octobre-décembre 2017, p. 142.