Governing charities: Church and state in Toronto's Catholic Archdiocese, 1850-1950

This dissertation examines the interrelation between Toronto's Roman Catholic Archdiocese and provincial and municipal governments from 1850 to 1950. The study assesses and situates the role of voluntary agencies, specifically Catholic charities, within Canadian social welfare history, by highlighting the public/private partnerships, or "mixed social economy," which characterized the delivery of social services. The thesis refutes historical interpretations of social welfare which maintain that religious institutions declined in importance as state initiatives intensified, beginning after World War One. When state welfare bureaucracies began expanding, they did so by strengthening their ties with the voluntary sector and integrating charitable initiatives into their social welfare programmes. The welfare state did not grow by shrinking the charity sector but rather by promoting and regulating it. The expansion of Catholic charities to encompass a broad array of social services was made possible, in large part, through essential government support.; In tracing these historical linkages, the dissertation focuses extensively on the techniques of governance used by charities and public bodies to administer voluntary services. Techniques like standardized reports, inspections, audits, and case records, to name a few, were emblematic of the social scientific impulse which infused the operations of Catholic charities. Such techniques better enabled charities to regulate, or 'govern', the lives of relief recipients and social and moral "deviants." As importantly, they facilitated a much greater degree of control and supervision over charities' own operations and procedures. Both governments and the Archdiocese employed these techniques to "govern at a distance" the daily workings of the voluntary sector.