Ministry & Meaning: A Religious History of Catholic Health Care in the United States

This is the first comprehensive study to explore the religious self-understanding of caregivers, particularly women religious whose ministry was manifested in public and private facilities, in times of epidemics and war, in cities and on the frontier, in railroad and mining-camp hospitals. With an emphasis upon their contexts Christopher J. Kauffman scrutinizes such historical spheres as the history of medicine, religious pluralism, ethnicity, the Catholic Health Association, and the modernization processes affecting church and health care. The history, bracketed by a Prologue on the European traditions and an Epilogue on contemporary challenges, is divided into three parts: The Formation of Catholic Identities, 1800-1890; Modernization and the Persistence of Tradition, 1890-1950; and The Acceleration of Social and Religious Change, 1950-1985. With a sensitivity to the significance of racism, sexism, anti-Catholicism, and nativism, as well as the influence of popular Catholicity, Kauffman locates the meanings of the ministry at the dynamic intersections of religion and culture.