Catholic Women at the Turn of The Twentieth Century: Defying Dichotomies

Historical examinations of the Progressive Era are abundant. Included under that umbrella we can find analyses of immigrant leisure, settlement houses, women's rights, religious-based reform, racial uplift, work culture—and the list goes on. What we are less likely to find, however, are studies of women who eschewed attention, argued that they were already emancipated, and who rejected organizing with other women. Kathleen Sprows Cummings' contribution, New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era, addresses this gap and explores the perspectives and behaviors of Catholic women in this era of social change, women's rights, and reform.

Cummings argues that her work extends the scant historical literature that examines Catholic women, women religious, and women in patriarchal religious traditions. Historians, Cummings contends, tend to ignore Catholic women, both lay and religious, and they are also hesitant to examine those women who are clearly aligned with conservative religions. On both counts, I am in partial agreement.

Regarding the lack of inquiry into Catholic women's lives at the turn of the twentieth century, Cummings' study complements a substantial body of work. Several notable members of the list include Colleen McDannell's The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900 (1986); Eileen Mary Brewer's Nuns and the Education of American Catholic Women, 1860-1920 (1987); the collection edited by Karen Kennelly, American Catholic Women: A History of Exploration (1989); James Kenneally's The History of American Catholic Women (1990); Paula M. Kane's Separatism and Subculture: Boston Catholicism, 1900-1920 (1994); Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith's Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836-1920 (1999); Deirdre M. Moloney's American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era (2002); and Maureen Fitzgerald's Habits of Compassion: Irish Catholic Nuns and the Origins of New York's Welfare System, 1830-1920 (2006). As a historian of Catholic women myself, what I see when I look at the field is less an issue of neglect and more an issue of accessibility. In other words, how much primary source material is available and accessible on Catholic women's history? The archives associated with Catholic orders, dioceses, and institutions vary widely in the area of material and policies, and that is worth noting. Additionally, as Cummings points out, Catholic women did not always have their names attributed to their work. Historical effacement poses challenges for the future chroniclers. Nevertheless, Cummings rightfully argues that women's history textbooks neglect Catholic women in their coverage.

Historical inquiry into the lives of women associated with conservative religions or women who are essentialist in their approach to "activism" places Catholicism in another more diverse historiographic subset. Evelyn Brooks Higginbothem's Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church (1993); Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (1993); Julie Roy Jeffrey's Great Silent Army of Abolitionists: Ordinary Women in the Anti-Slavery Movement (1998); and R. Marie Griffith's God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission (2000), are all at least partially alert to religious and often conservative women. When the women under examination cannot be categorized as overt women's rights advocates or feminists, do historians neglect them? Often times yes, and once again, this can in part be attributed to sources. Organizations of women leave records, but individual women often do not. Commenting about her research on women of the Church of God in Christ, Anthea Butler remarked that she was more likely to find sources "in a closet" than in the archive.¹

Cummings overcomes this potential obstacle by focusing on two writers and two educational leaders, all of whom had substantial written records. She posits that while Catholic identity may have superseded gender identity, and promotion of the...