Princeton University Press has published a new history of American Jesuits by John McGreevy, dean of the College of Arts and Letters and professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. American Jesuits and the World: How an Embattled Religious Order Made Modern Catholicism Global, according to the publisher, argues that Jesuits following their order’s restoration in 1814 “were at the vanguard of the Catholic Church’s expansion around the world.” It was especially in the United States of the nineteenth century, however, that “foreign-born Jesuits built universities and schools, aided Catholic immigrants, and served as missionaries.” McGreevy “traces this nineteenth-century resurgence, showing how Jesuits nurtured a Catholic modernity through a disciplined counterculture of parishes, schools, and associations.”
In 2015, McGreevy delivered the inaugural Lecture on Jesuit Studies, and the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College awarded him the George E. Ganss, S.J., Award in recognition of his significant scholarly contributions to the field of Jesuit Studies. The video of McGreevy’s lecture is available online.
- Update: Thinking Faith has reviewed American Jesuits and the World (November 2016).