Religion, Medicine, and Politics: Catholic Physicians' Guilds in America,1909-32

In 1909 the first Catholic physicians' guild formed in New York City. By 1911 guilds could be found in Philadelphia and Boston. They acted as professional organizations as well as brotherhoods built on a set of shared religious and moral convictions. They brought moral perspectives from Catholic doctrine into critical conversation with their medical work. By 1931, enough enthusiasm existed to form the National Federation of Catholic Physicians' Guilds (NFCPG). The creation of NFCPG marked a clear effort to insert Catholic values into America's health care debates. Focusing on the Philadelphia and Boston guilds, and with the use of archival collections at the Boston and Philadelphia archdioceses, this article examines the origins of the guild movement. Over the first several decades of their existence the guilds became an increasingly politically savvy force in American health care as they worked to influence local, state, and federal health policies surrounding women's health care.