Experiencing the Sacred: Material Culture and the Twentieth-Century American Hospital

This paper involves a textual analysis of how Catholic sisters presented themselves and their hospitals to the public through paintings, symbols, stories, photographs, written communications, and practices. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Catholic sisters cared for many European immigrants in their miners,’ railroad, and general hospitals. Most Catholic hospitals admitted African Americans but only in segregated spaces. In the first half of the twentieth century, their hospital practices reflected prevailing societal attitudes about race. Within this environment, Catholic sisters marketed their health care institutions as including “sacred” space within the “medical” space of the hospital. Patients could experience the divine by interacting not only with religious women but also with hospital art and architecture. These were important in the visual projection of a sacred Catholic identity. Devotions and relics were also popular with immigrant Catholics; sisters used beads, scapulars, medals, and holy pictures to lead a patient closer to God. Religious clothing was another physical representation of religion, which could serve as a boundary between the sister and the laity. The religious buildings, architecture, art, clothing, devotions, and other specific practices in Catholic hospitals did not stand alone. They were created to provide a world of sacred meaning for patients and nursing students.

Sisters used religious objects in their hospitals to tell the world around them that they were Catholic. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, as assimilation occurred, secularization increased, theology changed, and individual tastes modified, Catholic sisters displayed more ecumenical symbols to assist them in marketing to non-Catholics, a growing middle class, and a more ethnically-diverse population. What resulted was a hospital environment that was acceptably appealing to both Catholics and non-Catholics. It served as a valuable connection both to the world of special economic interests and belief systems.