Jesuits in the North American Colonies and the United States: Faith, Conflict, Adaptation(Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies)

From Eusebio Kino to Daniel Berrigan, and from colonial New England to contemporary Seattle, Jesuits have built and disrupted institutions in ways that have fundamentally shaped the Catholic Church and American society. As Catherine O’Donnell demonstrates, Jesuits in French, Spanish, and British colonies were both evangelists and agents of empire. John Carroll envisioned an American church integrated with Protestant neighbors during the early years of the republic; nineteenth-century Jesuits, many of them immigrants, rejected Carroll’s ethos and created a distinct Catholic infrastructure of schools, colleges, and allegiances. The twentieth century involved Jesuits first in American war efforts and papal critiques of modernity, and then (in accord with the leadership of John Courtney Murray and Pedro Arrupe) in a rethinking of their relationship to modernity, to other faiths, and to earthly injustice. O’Donnell’s narrative concludes with a brief discussion of Jesuits’ declining numbers, as well as their response to their slaveholding past and involvement in clerical sexual abuse.

Table of Contents:
Abstract Keywords 1. Introduction 2. Jesuits in the Colonial Era 3. New France Takes Root 4. Royal 5. The Pays d’en Haut and Louisiana 6. The Pimería Alta 7. Jesuits in the British North American Colonies 8. Maryland’s Founding 9. Early Years in Maryland 10. Maryland Transformed 11. Penal Era 12. Suppression 13. Jesuits in the New American Nation 14. Atlantic Currents 15. A New Society 16. A Growing Nation and Society 17. The West 18. Slavery and War 19. A World Apart? 20. The Work Continues 21. Education, Americanism, and Modernism 22. A Transformational Century 23. Toward Modernity 24. The Second World War 25. Controversy and Transformation 26. Toward the Present 27. Change Accelerates 28. Conclusion: Toward the Future Bibliography

About the Author :
Catherine O’Donnell, PhD (1998), is a member of the history faculty at Arizona State University. She is the author of numerous articles and books on culture and Catholicism in the United States, including Elizabeth Seton: American Saint (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018).