Models of Charitable Care: Catholic Nuns and Children in Their Care in Amsterdam, 1852–2002 (review)

This book on charitable care is an important contribution to the ongoing debate about the experiences of children taken into care by Catholic nuns and priests in the past. First and foremost, however, Models of Charitable Careis a historical study of charitable works by Dutch nuns. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Poor Sisters of the Divine Child initiated a home for neglected and poor children in Amsterdam. One reason Van Heijst chose to study this institution was that she found, in addition to material on the congregation and their caring activities, a booklet by a Dutch journalist who depicted the story of his mother's life as a girl in a children's home of this congregation. In contrast to his negative evaluation, Van Heijst makes a plea for a more nuanced assessment. Thereby, her focus is on the religious motivation of the nuns. They, Van Heijst argues in their favor, were the ones who took responsibility for the life of the little girl, while she was left alone by her own family and the rest of the world. Furthermore, Van Heijst uses an autobiographical account by another former pupil of the Amsterdam home The Providence during the years 1852–56, the first years of this institution. These memories, however, were written down many years later, by Sister Hyppolyta, who looked back on her experiences as a girl taken into the "mercy of care" by nuns of a congregation that later became her own.

Central to Van Heijst's examination are the rules and regulations governing their work given to the nuns by their male clerical superiors. The nuns were held to treat children with a warm and loving attitude, instead of handling them in a harsh and punitive spirit. An important argument for a more positive evaluation of this care is, according to Van Heijst, that the required mode of care was based on self-sanctification. This religious practice of " self-care, by taking care of others" (p. 257; emphasis in original) created " solidarity between strangers" (p. 221; emphasis in original) and " religious reciprocity" (p. 261; emphasis in original). Theoretically, this line of arguments leads Van Heijst to the construction of a new model of charitable care, based on an "ethic of charitable care."Earlier models to explain this type of care were constructed by historians who showed skepticism about the intentions of the human beings involved. The first model only focused on a "one-way-interaction" (topdown from caregiver to care receiver), while the second model also included the agency of both caregivers and care receivers. The third model, as proposed by the author, added a third term to the care relationship, that of God and his "generous love" and consequently that of so-called "religious kinship."

From my historical, although not religious, point of view, this third term is problematic. From my perspective, religion is part of the structure that shapes knowledge and cultural meaning in human relations based on caring power. Religion never is an isolated element on its own. Thus—as Van Heijst, for that matter, has formulated herself on page 376—it is the concept of "power" that needs reconsideration. Nevertheless, it is precisely this type of provoking insight that makes Models of Charitable Carean important book. It is a mustread for every researcher in the historiography of care work by nuns and for those interested in the debates on what actually took place in the history of various religious-inspired forms of care.