“Up against a Stone Wall”: Gender, Power, and the National Catholic Community Houses

In March of 1919, Margaret Long had reached the end of her rope.   As part of the reconstruction work of the Women’s Committee of the National Catholic War Council, she had been set the task of establishing National Catholic Community Houses throughout the country—houses which would operate under Catholic auspices to shelter working girls and serve as centers for Americanization work.  But she found the task impeded at every turn by members of her own Church.  Long warned her superior that “without the hearty and spoken approval of our hierarchy we are up against a stone wall.”

This paper explores the struggles American Catholic women like Margaret Long faced when they tried to create national organizations for Catholic women.  During the suffrage era, a time when women’s organizations were gaining unprecedented political and social influence, American Catholic laywomen wanted their voices recognized in the national debates of the day.  They faced, however, both structural and cultural barriers in their attempts to do this.  I will focus on three interconnected problems the women who worked on the Community House project had to confront.  First, and most significantly, these laywomen had to battle both passive and active resistance of the patriarchal hierarchy who undermined the women’s control over Community Houses.  Second, they had to negotiate complex parish and diocesan politics as well as deal with priests and bishops who resisted any attempts of outsiders to have influence over the Catholics in their jurisdictions.  Finally, they had to fight for respect from other women activists who viewed Catholics as backward, anti-feminist and possibly un-American.  Ultimately, these problems stymied the ability of Catholic laywomen to achieve their potential on the national stage.