UC Santa Barbara

Catholic women religious have had an indelible impact on American society, particularly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During this key formative period, sisters built a network of charitable institutions that formed the foundation of social services throughout the country, including schools, orphanages, and hospitals. Through their work, they functioned as important cultural intermediaries for immigrant Catholics, provided much-needed labor for the Church, and generated creative solutions to social problems that impacted Catholics and non-Catholics alike. These accomplishments were achieved in spite of rampant poverty, sexism, ethnic and religious bigotry, notwithstanding strict Church rules limiting their actions.

Although historians have established women religious as active agents, illustrating in rich detail the ways in which sisters negotiated this contested terrain through a blend of practical vision, spiritual belief, and political savvy (Coburn and Smith 1999; Mangion 2007; Butler 2012), few scholars have systematically studied the institutional tools that were at sisters’ disposal. The foundation of female religious life was the Rules and constitutions, the official guidelines that governed religious congregations and provided them with institutional leverage that could prove instrumental. These tools were utilized by women religious in Europe, but the American milieu—specifically the West—combined with the high demand for their labor, a lack of standardization for how sisters should operate, and a need for flexibility, created a space in which such institutional leverage could be exercised.

Integration of sociological perspectives, particularly the institutional logics perspective, makes it possible to more deeply understand the institutional processes underlying these actions. Through a comparative study of five congregations of Catholic apostolic sisterhoods operating in the Archdiocese of San Francisco during the period of 1850-1925, this dissertation explores how organizational structure and culture functioned as a source of institutional tools, resources, and capacities. When paired with the strategic deployment of normative femininity and political knowledge, these institutional tools formed a repertoire of organizational strategies and resources that provided sisters with institutional leverage instrumental in securing their interests in the face of patriarchal opposition.

Through the system of gendered adaptations designed to help them navigate the fraught terrain of a strict patriarchal institution, Catholic women religious maximized the autonomy they could exercise within their narrow sphere of influence without risking the consequences of blatant disobedience and insubordination. In doing so, they also created an important foundation for discernment and decision making, one that leveraged institutional tools to expand their limited agency. These choices not only shaped sisters’ immediate concerns but allowed them to be organizationally resilient, guiding the adaptation, evolution, and, ultimately, the survival of their congregations.