American Catholic Hospitals: A Century of Changing Markets and Missions

3. Religion, Gender, and the Public Representation of Catholic Hospitals

55 “Experiencing the physical dimension of religion,” Colleen McDannell has noted, “helps bring about religious values, norms, behaviors, and attitudes.”1 As Catholic hospitals partnered with non-Catholic facilities in the late twentieth century, they faced challenges in their religious identities. This was not the case in the century’s earlier decades. During that era, patients could experience the divine through both the religious women and men who attended them and the religious images and symbols that surrounded them. This was one of the ways that Catholic sisters and brothers distinguished themselves and their hospitals from secular facilities. They conceived of illness not only in biological terms but also within a spiritual framework, and they viewed themselves as spiritual agents of care. Catholic hospitals were places where people could obtain not only physical healing but also a “good death.” These tangible signs, symbols, and beliefs informed Catholics who they were and identified their institutions to non-Catholics.2 Sisters and brothers used written sources as well as unwritten texts—images of buildings, clothing, art, and photographs—to market their religious messages to their patients and to the general public. A visitor to a Catholic hospital in the early twentieth century saw fonts of holy water and paintings of the bishop, the Virgin Mary, and saints. These places powerfully influenced the meaning of nursing for the women, men, and nursing students who worked in them. Analyses of nursing have paid attention to representations, mainly of women,throughphotographsandwritings.Representationinvolveshowpeople and institutions present themselves to the public through paintings, symbols, Religion, Gender, and the Public Representation of Catholic Hospitals Chapter 3 56 American Catholic Hospitals stories, photographs, written communications, and practices. Although such sources do not indicate actual lived experiences, they can be useful for investigating the role of religion and gender in constituting social interactions.3 Over the course of the twentieth century, religious and gendered representations changed as Catholic beliefs and practices changed; nevertheless, religion persisted with relation to Catholic hospitals, albeit in different ways. Public Representations of Religion: The U.S. Catholic Hospital In the first half of the twentieth century, Catholic leaders marketed their health care institutions as including “sacred” space within the “medical” space of the hospital. Hospital art and architecture were important in the visual projection of a sacred Catholic identity. Catholicism’s acceptance of paintings, sculptures , and other religious icons distinguished it from the Protestant tradition, which shunned icons and emphasized preaching. To Catholics, however, artworks were signs that mediated religious meanings. Sisters and brothers held processionals in their hospitals, accompanied patients to masses in hospital chapels, and held devotions to the saints to remind patients of their faith. These practices conveyed a distinct religious vision and were important in a religion such as Catholicism that emphasized ritual.4 In the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, devotions were very much a part of Catholic spirituality. As McDannell asserts: “Catholics learned and accepted the reality of a supernatural community because they were taught how to interact with it through their devotional practices.”5 In the nineteenth century the Catholic Church had revived exercises such as the rosary, forty hours’ devotion, benediction, and devotions to the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Conception. Devotions to the saints and the Virgin Mary, who, Catholics believed, had power over disease, were especially important. Devotions were a form of popular religion that acted as a bridge between the intellectual teachings of the Church and the expression of one’s personal piety. They could help concretize certain tenets of Catholicism, such as redemption . For example, veneration of the Blessed Sacrament reflected the Catholic doctrine of the real presence of Christ. Novenas, or nine-day devotions, honored a saint or supported a particular request. Relics were popular, and sisters and brothers used beads, scapulars, medals, and holy pictures to lead a patient closer to God. Religious clothing, another physical representation of religion, could mark a boundary between a sister or brother and members of the laity.6 Catholic hospitals’ religious buildings, architecture, art, clothing , use of devotions, and other specific practices were created by Catholic Religion, Gender, and Representation 57 brothers and sisters to provide a world of religious meaning for their patients and nursing students.7 Catholic architecture and images changed in the later twentieth century. In 1916, for example, the Alexian Brothers’ hospital entranceway had several plaster statues, decorative plants, and a ceiling painted with...