This article was published in The Tablet, the newspaper of the Diocese of Brooklyn, on July 22, 2023. See the piece at thetablet.org, in a slightly revised form. I have been a freelance writer and editor for the newspaper, published by DeSales Media, since August 2021.

A story of international intrigue, religious upheaval, and institutional crisis will be retold from the Church’s history books on July 21 as the Jesuit order marks the 250^th anniversary of its near-death experience.

Members of the Society of Jesus, globally and locally, including in the Diocese of Brooklyn, recall this month that their predecessors suffered much when Pope Clement XIV officially abolished, or suppressed, the society in July 1773.

But the experience, which ended in 1814, has borne long-term fruit.

Crediting that earlier generation’s prayer and trust in Christ for a rebound into action, the order now looks back on its 41 years of suspension—a kind of shadow existence—as a distant, but still meaningful, memory.

Most Jesuits in the United States served temporarily as diocesan priests from 1773 until [MM1] Pope Pius VII reauthorized the society worldwide with a “restoration” decree. Free from government intrusions in the matter, even the order’s underground period still left leeway for the making of Catholic history during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783).

Based on the recommendation of Benjamin Franklin, Rome appointed Father John Carroll, one of the former Jesuits, as the first bishop leading the Church in the U.S.

He soon convened meetings of clergy to develop a college. In 1789, Bishop Carroll purchased the property in Washington, DC, which became Georgetown University—an early entry in U.S. higher education and the country’s first Catholic college.

Advancing the Church’s ministry was much more difficult in Europe during this time. Political chaos and government pressures led to Pope Clement’s reluctant decision to declare the suppression.

Monarchs, eager to strengthen their own reigns and influenced by Enlightenment philosophies to resist Catholicism, targeted the Jesuits in attempts to constrain the pontiff. Many leaders saw the society as a widespread, powerful, and arrogant force, fiercely loyal to the Church hierarchy.

Portugal, Spain, and France took the lead in expelling the society. In this era when traditionally strong church-state bonds were erased and the values of the modern state were up for debate, Pope Clement feared that whole swaths of Europe might officially reject the faith, not unlike King Henry VIII’s break with Catholicism in England in 1534.

This time, the situation was even more complex. Portugal and Spain saw the Jesuit missions ministering to indigenous peoples in South America as threats to the royal colonizers and their grip on authority.

Jesuits championed a concept of moral order that had natural and supernatural roots, according to Father Michael Maher, a Jesuit professor at Marquette University and expert on the order’s history.

As creatures of God, this natural-law philosophy held, the colonized peoples—and all persons—have unique dignity, and a nation should respect their pre-existing rights and freedoms.

But many leaders on the world stage—contrary to the Jesuits and to the American founders, among others—argued that rulers have the authority to create, parcel out, and deny people’s rights. In this “laws-of-nature” approach, power was the decisive factor, Father Maher said.

Amid that feud and others, anti-religious sentiments were bubbling up in France. The upheaval of the French Revolution (1789-1799) closed the country’s churches, as well as additional Catholic orders.

A few countries took different courses. Catherine the Great of Russia ignored the suppression decree. She preferred to allow the Society of Jesus to continue operating schools in her country. [MM2] 

At the time of Pope Clement’s sweeping decree, the Superior General of the Jesuits, Father Lorenzo Ricci, motivated his men to adopt a distinctly Christian frame of mind, accepting humiliation, swallowing their pride, [MM3] and pursuing peace.

In a 2014 homily looking back on those years of tumult, Pope Francis praised Father Ricci for the tone he set and guidance he gave.

By the time the abolition was reversed, the remaining and soon-to-return Jesuits “knew how to invest, after the test of the cross, in the great mission of bringing the light of the Gospel to the ends of the earth,” Pope Francis said.

“The Society, even faced with its own demise, remained true to the purpose for which it was founded,” he said. Though the structure was dismantled for a while, the Pope described the “Jesuit identity” which survived: one’s loving trust of [MM4] Christ and dedicated ministry to others, modeling belief and hope.

Today, approximately 20,000 Jesuit priests (along with consecrated brothers and “scholastics” preparing for their vocation) serve in some 100 countries.

The Society’s largest presence in New York City is Fordham University, established in 1841, with about 17,000 students now enrolled. The U.S.-based Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities lists 28 member institutions.

Education is the Jesuits’ largest missionary endeavor, among many others. They teach in high schools and prestigious centers of graduate study around the world.

Their underlying message is “that we see revelation as grounded in reason,” historian Father Maher told The Tablet. Combining philosophy and theology, the society has followed Christ’s love for creation in both body and soul, centered on “the fullness of the human condition.”

“One of the big mental transitions the Jesuits had to make” was that the “repository” of human dignity “no longer was in monarchy; it was in republic,” Father Maher said. Responsible for fostering and respecting individual rights in everyday life, God’s people need a complete education.

But Catholic values go beyond education to outreaches of all sorts, such as parishes. In that ministry, Father Maher said, “we learn by revelation and by worship that God loves us and we are called to a higher plane.”

In the Diocese of Brooklyn, the Society of Jesus began its ministry at Our Lady of the Presentation-Our Lady of Mercy Parish, Brownsville, four years ago.

That largely Black and Latino congregation has roots including West Indian, Nigerian, Puerto Rican, and Garifuna—a people of African and indigenous American ancestry from the Caribbean Island of St. Vincent, Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize, which for a time was a Jesuit mission. The parish offers a monthly Mass in the Garifuna language.

Another Jesuit, Father Carlos Quijano, serves as administrator at St. Paul the Apostle Parish, Corona. Additional priests, based at the order’s community residence in Crown Heights, fan out to celebrate Mass at other parishes.

Brothers and priests at the residence, established in 2017 after the Society of Jesus had been mostly absent from the diocese for some years, accomplish various ministries, such as retreats. They offer personal spiritual direction, using the Spiritual Exercises of their founder, St. Ignatius Loyola.

“I was happy to see our community move here and happy to be part of taking on the parish work,” said Father Vin Sullivan, pastor at Our Lady of the Presentation-Our Lady of Mercy.

He is a Brooklyn native who attended a Jesuit landmark, nicknamed Brooklyn Prep, which famously taught college-bound boys from 1908 to its closure in 1972.

Now, the society is known for Brooklyn Jesuit Prep, East Flatbush, a Catholic middle school serving low-income families of multiple races, ethnicities, and faiths. Its goal is “to develop young leaders who are intellectually competent, open to growth, loving, religious, and committed to doing justice.”

Father Sullivan told The Tablet the order has four priorities in its service to the Diocese of Brooklyn: helping people spiritually as they come to know Jesus Christ; especially accompanying the poor and the marginalized, such as migrants; ministering to young people in their pursuit of a hope-filled future; and “caring for our common home,” in solidarity with Pope Francis’ concern for the environment and a fraternal human ecology.

Plenty of adaptation to changing times, on the streets of New York and around the world, has led the Jesuits and the Church to where they are today, and “the theme is just hope,” Father Sullivan said.

Looking back on the suppression which occurred in a chaotic world 250 years ago this month, one sees lessons learned which brought Jesuits closer to God and closer to the people.

“The whole thing was the experience of death and resurrection,” Father Sullivan said. “That’s kind of what it’s about—somehow trusting in the work of God and the Spirit.”

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