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  • Polish American Sisterhoods: The Americanization Process
  • Dorota Praszałowicz

The accomplishments of Catholic sisterhoods in the United States was all the more remarkable when one considers the situation of women in that day.1

I. Introduction

Polish American sisterhoods have played key, but underestimated, role in the history of American Polonia.2 They were active communities, and their sisters participated in every-day life of the immigrant neighborhoods. The Sisters of St. Felix of Cantalice Third Order of St. Francis, commonly known as Felicians, Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, Bernardine Franciscan Sisters, and Sisters of the Resurrection arrived from Polish centers. Other immigrant sisterhoods were established by Polish people in the U.S., with the largest one being the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis, based in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. All of them oriented themselves toward keeping religious and cultural continuity of their compatriots in ethnic urban and rural communities.

In the course of time, when the Polish inner city neighborhoods disintegrated, the sisters adapted. Today they cater to mostly Spanish speaking immigrants. In accord with the experiences of immigrants in the United States the Polish Sisterhoods underwent the Americanization process. But there is no scholarly history of this process. This article does not delve into documentary sources, but rather it engages the secondary literature to highlight the historical trends.

It is important to point out that the immigrant communities of sisters became more visible, and even more powerful, than they had ever been in Polish lands. This is not to say that sisters were invisible in the Old World. The sisterhoods were an important [End Page 45] part of the cultural and spiritual landscape of Polish lands at the time of the mass overseas migration in the late nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth. They actively participated in the Catholic Church’s efforts to support Polish national identity which (at least since the Counter-Reformation) was strongly intertwined with the Catholic faith, especially vis a vis Orthodox Russia and Protestant Prussia. It must be remembered that at the time when Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia, and Austria (1795–1918) the Catholic Church was the only official institution which operated in all three parts of the Polish lands.

Due to the sisters’ involvement in promotion of national activity, they were suppressed or even banned by the Russian and Prussian authorities. Their situation in the Austrian Poland was easier, thanks to the privileged position of the Catholic Church in Austria-Hungary, and to the autonomy granted to Poles by the Habsburg court. For example, the Felician Sisters, active in the Russian Poland since 1855, were banned by the Russian authorities in 1864 yet were able to reestablish their community in Austrian Poland (Kraków) in 1865.3 At the same time other Polish sisterhoods were established in exile, and they oriented themselves toward the largest Polonia communities in the world. For example, the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, as well as Resurrectionist Sisters (and also Resurrectionist Brothers) started their mission in Rome where they still have their headquarters.

At the time when there was no Polish state, the orders participated in the construction of the national “imagined community,” both in the Old Country (as much as they could, acting often in the underground community) and abroad.4 Due to the high volume of the Polish migration outflow, the national leaders were concerned about the assimilation process, and the danger of disintegration of the nation. Therefore the sisters became directly involved in immigrant life and understood their task as a work toward Polish cultural continuity. The largest center of Polonia developed in the United States and here the sisters substantially contributed to the process of developing strong ethnic communities.

William I. Thomas believed that Polish immigrants found it much more difficult to adjust to the New World than any other group of newcomers in the late nineteenth century. In his opinion, “They [Poles] were the most incomprehensible and perhaps the most disorganized of all the immigrant groups.”5 For this reason Thomas decided to study the organization and disorganization of the group. Today we are grateful to [End Page...

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