Yet, Jesuits remained a part of the history of the American church even when they did not, in the view of the church, exist. After first facing banishment from particular realms, in 1773 the Society was suppressed by Pope Clement XIV (1705–74, r.1769–74). In the eighteenth century, the order ran afoul of European sovereigns. In the years that followed, Jesuits explored territory, proselytized indigenous peoples, and participated in Spanish, French, and English imperialism in ways that shaped both local and transatlantic communities. Members of the Society of Jesus first set foot on land that would become part of the United States in the earliest days of European colonization. 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. 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. 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. ![]() As Catherine O’Donnell demonstrates, Jesuits in French, Spanish, and British colonies were both evangelists and agents of empire. 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.
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