cover image American Jesuits and the World: How an Embattled Religious Order Made Modern Catholicism Global

American Jesuits and the World: How an Embattled Religious Order Made Modern Catholicism Global

John T. McGreevy. Princeton Univ. Press, $35 (304p) ISBN 978-0-691-17162-3

McGreevy (Catholicism and American Freedom), historian of American political and religious history at the University of Notre Dame, seeks to place 19th-century American Jesuits in a global context. Beginning with Pope Pius VII's 1814 restoration of the Jesuit order, ending 41 years of exile from the faith, McGreevy marches forward into the early 20th century through a series of thematic case studies laid out in roughly chronological chapters. Each case study is well sourced in the historical record, using moments of theological and political tension to illustrate change over time. Readers are introduced to violent clashes over education and religious liberty (Ellsworth, Maine), debates about nationalism and war (Westphalia, Mo.), the place of miracles in the Catholic faith (Grand Couteau, La.), Americanization of immigrants and the nature of higher education (Philadelphia, Pa.), and U.S. imperialism (Manila, Philippines). At times, the book's intense focus on intra-Catholic and Catholic-Protestant tensions in the context of nation-building leave key aspects of American nationalism underexplored. The Jesuits stance on slavery and abolition, for example, is framed in terms of fear about white radicals rather than appreciation for black humanity. Not until the chapter on empire does the author begin to articulate the multiracial and truly global nature of the Jesuit order. Despite this, McGreevy's deeply researched work sheds significant light on the European Jesuits' role in shaping modern America. (June)