Church-State collaboration on the stewardship of orphans
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
What are the origins of church-state collaboration in social welfare provision, and how does that collaboration affect the state’s capacity to provide social welfare services? While the Massachusetts state government has a rich history of collaborating with the Catholic Church to care for children in need, these two institutions have fundamentally different values regarding the character of social service work. By first understanding the doctrine that underpins the Catholic desire to serve and exploring its history of orphan stewardship in America, this thesis analyzes the origins of church-state collaboration in the social welfare endeavor of caring for children without stable homes. Next, this thesis brings these implications into a modern analysis of how today’s church-state collaboration model impacts the state’s capacity to provide stable living conditions to children facing custodial crises. This analysis is completed with a qualitative approach characterized by archival research and the analysis of both government and religious organization-generated primary source documents. From this examination, a potential hypothesis of two conditions is established. Firstly, for church-state collaboration to increase the state’s capacity to provide the social service of foster care, the religious values of the church will be complementary to the state’s conceptualization of social welfare. Secondly, the church will provide financial and human resources to the state for the purpose of social welfare provision. This research design model hopes to contribute to the literature a post-secularist understanding of social welfare in Massachusetts and the implications this pattern has upon the system in which it thrives.
Description
2024
License
Attribution 4.0 International