What is the one way that you can make everyone at Notre Dame and Boston College mad?
“You ask, ‘Is Notre Dame a Jesuit school?’” said John McGreevy, dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Notre Dame, at the start of Thursday night’s lecture.
McGreevy’s address was the inaugural lecture in the Lecture Series on Jesuit Studies promoted by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College. This new lecture series is set to bring scholars in the field of Jesuit Studies to BC. The Institute, launched in 2014, was founded to promote the history, spirituality, and educational tradition of the Jesuits through various lectures, courses, workshops, and publications.
John T. McGreevy is the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters and Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He received his B.A. from Notre Dame and his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He taught at Harvard before joining the faculty at Notre Dame in 1997, and has served as dean since 2008.
In his lecture, titled “American Jesuits and the World: Toward a More Global Religious History,” McGreevy discussed the suppression of the world’s Jesuits, particularly in Europe and South America, and their migration to the United States and beyond.
At the start of the event, McGreevy was presented with the George E. Ganss, S.J., Award in Jesuit Studies, which recognized his scholarly work and contributions to the field of Jesuit Studies.
McGreevey’s lecture was about the subject of his forthcoming book, titled American Jesuits and the World, which will be published by the Princeton University Press next year.
McGreevy discussed the global dissemination of European and Latin American Jesuits.
“Over half of the world’s 2,000 Jesuits volunteered for missionary service in the 1830s and 1840s, and during that time alone, the Society established new missions in Syria, Calcutta, Argentina, India, China, Albania, Canada, Madagascar, Algeria, and Australia,” he said.
Many of these missionary Jesuits, however, moved to the U.S. more than any other place between 1814 and 1880. They migrated from places such as Germany, Paris, Switzerland, Lyon, Naples, and Mexico. In the mid-1900s, Jesuits were expelled from 22 European and Latin American countries, he said, and liberal nationals began to think that a global Catholic religious order threatened the stability of new nation states.
McGreevy honed in on the impact of Jesuits in the U.S., in particular. In 1830, the American population was about 3 percent Catholic. By 1900, almost 20 percent of the population were.
“In this sense, the Jesuits followed the Catholic tide,” McGreevy said, regarding the migration of Catholics out of Europe in the 19th century.
This newfound community of Catholic priests, Jesuits, and lay people began to create a community highly attuned to global Catholicism at the time. McGreevy also discussed religious divisions among Catholics and Protestants in the 19th century which heavily influenced politics and culture and compelled Americans to seek a definition for religious liberty in this now religiously diverse nation.
In the latter portion of his lecture, McGreevy spoke of a Jesuit very significant to the BC community. He told the story of Father John Bapst, S.J., the founder of BC, and the namesake for Bapst Library.
He spoke about Bapst’s time in a small, Protestant town in Maine, his distaste for the King James Bible, and his strong belief in Catholic schools.
McGreevy discussed how Bapst exemplified the Catholic revival in three specific ways: his effort to instill basic Catholic doctrinal knowledge in populations lacking this education, his focus on Catholic education and the importance of building “self-consciously Catholic institutions,” and his suspicion of the modern nation state. Bapst, among his roles as a parish priest and as founder of BC, was referred to as a “suffering victim of intolerance,” McGreevy said.
He continued to discuss the tension between Catholics and Protestants in America and throughout the world at the time and how this religious conflict possesses further global implications.
“This global consciousness provides a professional opportunity, maybe even a professional obligation, for historians interested in Catholicism,” he said.
Featured Image by Kaylie Daniels / For The Heights
