Catholic sisters and nuns in the United States

Catholic sisters and nuns in the United States have played a major role in American religion, education, nursing and social work since the early 19th century. In Catholic Europe, convents were heavily endowed over the centuries, and were sponsored by the aristocracy. There were very few rich American Catholics, and no aristocrats. Religious orders were founded by entrepreneurial women who saw a need and an opportunity, and were staffed by devout women from poor families. the numbers grew exponentially from about 900 in the year 1840, to a maximum of nearly 200,000 in 1965, falling to 56,000 in 2010.

Numbers

The numbers grew rapidly, from 900 sisters in 15 communities in 1840, 50,000 in 170 orders in 1900, and 135,000 in 300 different orders by 1930. Starting in 1820, the sisters always outnumbered the priests and brothers.[1] Young women entered after elementary school, and spent one year at a novitiate training program before entering full-time roles.[2] Their total number peaked in 1965 at 180,000 then plunged to 56,000 in 2010. Most simply left their orders.[3][4] There were very few replacements. In the early 1960s, 7000 young women a year joined the orders; by 1990 there were only 1000 a year.[5]

Parochial schools

By the middle of the 19th century, the Catholics in larger cities started building their own parochial school system. The main impetus was fear that exposure to Protestant teachers in the public schools, and Protestant fellow students, would lead to a loss of faith. Protestants reacted by strong opposition to any public funding of parochial schools. The Catholics nevertheless built their elementary schools, parish by parish, using very low paid sisters as teachers.[6] They created the world's largest network of religious schools.[7]

In the classrooms, the highest priorities were piety, orthodoxy, and strict discipline. Knowledge of the subject matter was a minor concern. The sisters came from numerous denominations, and there was no effort to provide joint teachers training programs. The bishops were indifferent. Around 1911, led by The Catholic University of America, Catholic colleges began summer institutes to train the sisters in pedagogical techniques. Dolan notes that in the early 20th century a majority young nuns who became teachers had not attended high school. They taught for a half-century or more and long past World War II, the Catholic schools were noted for inferior conditions compared to the public schools, and less well-trained teachers.[8] The rapid growth of the Catholic population continued, and after 1945 it started to pour into the suburbs. At the peak in 1960, 13,000 schools served over 5 million students.[9]

By the 1960s there was an growing lack of teaching sisters. The solution was to hire much more expensive lay teachers, who grew from 4% of the elementary teachers in the Chicago archdiocese in 1950 to 38% by 1965.[10]

Baby trains

The New York Foundling Hospital was established in 1869 by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul to help unwed mothers put them up for adoption in Catholic homes. There was fear that public charities would place the babies in Protestant homes. By 1870 infant mortality had fallen sharply, producing a surplus of healthy children aged 2-4 in need of families. Orphanages in the city were expensive and designed for older children who had families that could not afford to care for them. There was a strong demand from farmers who could not have children of their own, so the Foundling Hospital set up "baby trains" to take as many as a thousand children a year west to Catholic farm families. The program lasted until the 1920s, when policy shifted to using orphanages and foster homes in New York.[11]

Religious role versus professional role

The tension between the sisters' religious commitment and their professional role emerged in the 19th century and grew more serious over time. In the 19th century the women generally saw the religious role as paramount, with their service to God expressed through their nursing or teaching or other activities. The bishops put little emphasis on advanced training or education. In hospitals, the sisters were prohibited from working in obstetric units, or venereal disease care. By the 20th century, however, the demands for professionalism in nursing grew stronger; many Catholic hospitals opened nursing schools, and the studentss did much of the routine nursing care for patients. In 1948 the Conference of Catholic Schools of Nursing was formed to promote college education for the nursing sisters. Before the 1940s the Catholic educators held that sisters who had not graduated from high school could learn to teach from their elders and by experience, while the public schools were requiring much stronger credentials. The goal was to quickly open as many schools as possible.[12] The 90,000 teaching sisters were served by 150 collegiate centers designed to provide them a bachelor's degree before they taught.[13]

Language and race

Chapel (1936) of the Felician Sisters in Livonia, Michigan.

Bishop Jean-Marie Odin (1800 – 1870), rebuilt the Catholic Church in ante-bellum Texas. Odin vigorously recruited priests and religious workers from the Eastern states, Quebec, England, and France. He reached the Hispanic, Irish, German and Polish children by bringing in the Ursuline teaching order of sisters and the Missionary Oblate priests of Mary Immaculate.[14]

In German districts, the Catholic parochial schools were taught entirely in German until World War I, despite the protests of Yankees and Irish Catholics who tried to Anglicize those schools through the Bennett Law of 1890 in Wisconsin.

The Americanization of new immigrants was a major role for the teaching sisters especially with the arrival of the Italians, Poles and others from Eastern and Southern Europe in the late 19th century, and the arrival of Hispanics after 1960. The Felician Sisters originated in Poland and came to the United States in 1874, which became its main base. The sisters provided social mobility for young Polish women. Although the congregation was involved in the care of orphans, the aged, and the sick, teaching remained its primary concern.[15] In Toledo, Ohio, in the early 20th century Polish nuns were used to assist the assimilation of Polish children. The sisters deemphasized the children's Polish heritage and taught in English, making frequent reference to Polish words . [16]

In Chicago, some of the black children arriving from Louisiana were already Catholic, and were taught by Catholic sisters. The primarily Irish American Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, the mostly German-American Franciscan Sisters, and the Polish-American Sisters of the Holy Family lived in the all-black segregated neighborhoods, where they learned about the pervasiveness of racism in America.[17]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ James M. O'Toole, The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America (2008) p 104
  2. ↑ Oates, 1984
  3. ↑ Margaret M. McGuinness, Called to Serve (2013), ch 8
  4. ↑ Another estimate gives 5000 in 1860, 22,000 in 1880, 90,000 in 1920 and 180,000 in 1950, with a peak in 1965 at 200,000. George C. Stewart, Marvels of Charity: History of American Sisters and Nuns (1994) p 565
  5. ↑ Patricia Wittberg, The Rise and Fall of Catholic Religious Orders: A Social Movement Perspective (1994) p. 1
  6. ↑ Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience (1985) pp 262-74
  7. ↑ "Review," Journal of American History (2014) 100#4:1221
  8. ↑ Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience (1985) pp 286-91
  9. ↑ Dominic J. Brewer; Patrick J. McEwan (2010). Economics of Education. Elsevier. pp. 319–20.
  10. ↑ James W. Sanders, Education of an Urban Minority: Catholics in Chicago, 1833-1965 (1977) pp 203-4
  11. ↑ Dianne Creagh, "The Baby Trains: Catholic Foster Care and Western Migration, 1873-1929," Journal of Social History (2012) 46#1 pp 197-218 online
  12. ↑ Oates, (1984) p 62
  13. ↑ Joanne K. McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (1996) pp 626-29
  14. ↑ Patrick Foley, "Builder of the Faith in Nineteenth-Century Texas: A Deeper Look at Bishop Jean-Marie Odin," Catholic Southwest (2008) 19#1 pp 52-65.
  15. ↑ Thaddeus C. Radzialowski, "Reflections on the History of the Felicians in America," Polish American Studies (1975) 21#1 pp 19-28.
  16. ↑ Sarah E. Miller, "'Send Sisters, Send Polish Sisters,'" Ohio History (2007) 114#1 pp 46-56
  17. ↑ Suellen Hoy, "Ministering Hope to Chicago,," Chicago History (2002) 31#2 pp 4-23.

Further reading