Abstract
Any review of a collection with this scope and depth on the Jesuits and women religious in America for a 200-year period can only give a taste of the feast that lies before you. Roberts and Schloesser have assembled rich fare for scholars and general readers of this vital period in the development of the American Church. They likewise provide a comprehensive, propaedeutic introduction (1–50), coupled with an incisive bibliography of major scholarship throughout this period.
Another outstanding piece in this volume covers the early foundations of American Jesuit higher education by the late Gerald McKevitt, SJ (51–98). Central to McKevitt’s thesis is that the early Jesuits took on too much, too soon, without adequate discernment and with too few resources, often enough skirting the Jesuit Superior General Roothaan’s attempts to apply the brakes. McKevitt contends that the rapid expansion caused problems with poor quality later on. McKevitt’s well-written, thoroughly researched essay leads one to truly regret that this fine scholar’s work was cut short.
For readers familiar with the more progressive traditions of the Society since Vatican II, the anti-liberalism, ultramontanism, and sentimental devotionalism (3) of the nineteenth-century Jesuits will come as a surprise. Yet, though the Jesuits were theologically conservative, even retrograde, they were incredibly entrepreneurial when it came to founding institutions.
As several authors note, a constant theme throughout the first hundred years of the Jesuit colleges was the tension between the traditional forms and procedures of the Jesuit in Europe and the brash, experimental American spirit. Thus Dana Freiberger could observe in her article about the founding of the three Jesuit medical schools that the US Jesuits proved “remarkably aware of their environment and willing to accommodate their work to their new surroundings,” despite the Society’s prohibition against engaging medical schools (221–22).
This volume originated from a symposium at Loyola University Chicago on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the restoration of the Society of Jesus. The title “Crossings and Dwellings,” taken from Crossings and Dwellings: A Theory of Religion by Thomas Tweed, provides a helpful interpretative lens. Tweed underscores the importance of position to understand the religious life of transnational migrants. He uses spatial metaphors to signal that being “religious is about finding a place and moving across space” (7).
Catholics certainly understood this well. An estimated sixty million Europeans, half of them Catholic, settled in the United States in the nineteenth century. Many of the early migrant Jesuits had romantic fantasies of converting innocent primitives and moved steadily westward to animate missions among the American Indians (7). The ideas of frontier, center, and periphery were constants and showed how fluid geographic boundaries could be. For the most part this pervasive metaphor works well, but at times authors strain to make the fit, such as, in the otherwise welcomed article by Rachel Daack, “Core and Peripheries,” about the pioneering work of the BVM sisters throughout Iowa and Illinois (305–37).
In fact, one of the most attractive features of this collection is the inclusion of the pioneering work of women religious—far too often neglected. The innovative BVM sisters of Dubuque, Iowa, are a great example of the leadership, dynamism, and ecclesial diplomacy of women religious throughout this whole era.
In the article “Recusant Constitutionalist Ultramontanism,” Thomas R. E. Murphy creates a pastiche of vaguely argued, but unconvincing, associations between the Jesuit recusant tradition and what Jesuits at Holy Cross (in the United States) and Clongowes Woods (in Ireland) were attempting to achieve in having their students adapt. In the USA the challenge becomes simultaneous loyalty to the pope and loyalty to the American Constitution. Interesting parallels may exist, but arguing that American Jesuits were influenced by the recusant tradition is a stretch that doesn’t bridge the gap (256ff.).
The valiant attempts by John Fox, SJ, to establish an indigenous community of women religious among the Yupik people on the outer frontiers of Alaska testifies to the loss of imagination by a bishop and a lost moment for an initiative that could have given native peoples leadership in their own culture and language. Mary Ewens in “Icy Crossings Dwellings” masterfully captures this largely unknown story (496–530).
The breadth of this scholarly collection is wide enough to entice almost every reader to explore this profoundly American epic in the Catholic Church. But as in dining at any top-notch restaurant, if you have to ask the price, then you may lose your appetite.