Governing Charities: Church and State in Toronto's Catholic Archdiocese, 1850-1950 (review)

Abstract

Canadian Governing Charities: Church and State in Toronto's Catholic Archdiocese, 1850-1950. By Paula Maurutto. [McGill-Queen's Studies in History of Religion, Series Two.] (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2003. Pp. xiv, 194. $65.00 Cdn.) In past twenty years, Canadian scholars have undertaken considerable research on Canada's largest non-francophone Catholic jurisdiction-the Archdiocese of Toronto. Created out of Upper Canadian wilderness in 1841, diocese has grown from its original 40,000 settlers and first peoples, stretched from Lake Ontario to head of Lake Superior, to a modern metropolis of over 1.3 million Catholics, who worship in dozens of languages each Sunday. Religious and social historians have traced evolution of Toronto's Irish Catholic community, examined rise of national churches, and have assessed various levels of Protestant-Catholic interplay, in what was once dubbed the Belfast of North America. Paula Maurutto's slender volume is a much-welcomed addition to growing body of literature on Toronto, and her approach to questions of state involvement in Catholic charities is certain to engender considerable debate, particularly among detractors and proponents of new right in Canada. Maurutto, a sociologist at University of Toronto, challenges simplistic social-policy theories of Ontario's late Conservative government (1995-2003). During heyday of their administrations, Premiers Mike Harris and Ernie Eves argued that Province needed to trim state's social service commitments, dismantle welfare state, and revert to a time when private institutions, charitable organizations, and churches were able to deliver high-quality social assistance without substantial government initiatives or intervention. By using Catholic charities of Archdiocese as her model, Maurutto destroys this political rhetoric by ably demonstrating that throughout their Catholic hospitals, orphanages, visiting nurses, houses of refuge, etc., always had a close relationship to municipal and provincial governments, who framed administrative expectations for these private agencies, while supplying them with sufficient funds to keep their bottom line in solvency. In end, Maurutto concludes that Roman Catholic charities were well entrenched in public welfare system (p. 125) and state had put in place numerous techniques (bureaucratic structures, auditing techniques, inspection, casework, social scientific theory, professional social work) that effectively brought these charitable institutions under its governance. Relying on a considerable body of secondary sources relating to public welfare and social services, Foucault's theories of governance, and treasures of Archdiocesan archives, Maurutto's case is well argued, sufficiently documented, and most convincing. In terms of historiography, Maurutto's book is as important for how it is written as for what is actually argued. From outset author states that her work is not comprehensive of all Catholic charities in region, nor does she probe Catholic intellectual history (p. 12) upon which many of charities were conceived. Instead her approach is that of historical sociology, wherein she carefully analyzes those charitable organizations, religious orders, and charity bureaucracies that worked closely with governments, gladly accepted public monies, and ultimately became subject to a variety of conditions and techniques that placed their distinctive Catholic social services under governance of state. …