Habits of Compassion: Irish Catholic Nuns and the Origins of New York's Welfare System, 1830-1920

Women, Gender, and Sexuality in American History

by Maureen Fitzgerald

The Irish-Catholic Sisters accomplished tremendously successful work in founding charitable organizations in New York City from the Irish famine through the early twentieth century. Maureen Fitzgerald argues that their championing of the rights of the poor—especially poor women—resulted in an explosion of state-supported services and programs. 

Parting from Protestant belief in meager and means-tested aid, Irish Catholic nuns argued for an approach based on compassion for the poor. Fitzgerald positions the nuns' activism as resistance to Protestantism's cultural hegemony. As she shows, Roman Catholic nuns offered strong and unequivocal moral leadership in condemning those who punished the poor for their poverty and unmarried women for sexual transgression. Fitzgerald also delves into the nuns' own communities, from the class-based hierarchies within the convents to the political power they wielded within the city. That power, amplified by an alliance with the local Irish Catholic political machine, allowed the women to expand public charities in the city on an unprecedented scale.

Genres: History, Read For School, Nonfiction

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 19, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Maureen Fitzgerald is an associate professor of religious studies and American studies at the College of William and Mary.

Reviews

[Kristine Gunnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first book about Catholic nuns and sisters that I read. Fitzgerald did more than reconstruct institutional histories, but placed sisters' lives and actions within an analytical framework, laying a foundation for my own work.