Peter Kenney: Twice Visitor of the Maryland Mission (1819–21, 1830–33) and Father of the First Two American Provinces

Chapter 8 Peter Kenney: Twice Visitor of the Maryland Mission (1819–21, 1830–33) and Father of the First Two American Provinces Robert Emmett Curran 1 Conflicting Authorities and Ethnicities In 1820, two characteristics distinguished the Maryland mission among the ju- risdictional units of the Society of Jesus: it possessed lands that it had held (or had held for it) continuously since the second quarter of the seventeenth century, and its membership was international. At the time of the suppression, the province in White Russia (Congress Poland),1 the mission in the Chesapeake region of British America, the British Isles, and a few other isolated places2 had escaped the confiscations of property that had come in the wake of the brief of Pope Clement xiv (1705–74, r.1769–74). Catherine the Great (1729–96, r.1762–96) had protected the Polish Jesuits in White Russia. Distance and disin- terest prevented the vicar apostolic of London, Richard Challoner (1691–1781), from exercising jurisdiction over the Jesuits in Great Britain’s North American colonies. Moreover, some ex-Jesuits in England threatened that they would use English law against the bishops to prevent confiscation. Thus the bishops did not proceed. With the partial restoration of the Society in the United States in 1805, through the auspices of the superior general, Tadeusz Brzozowski (1749–1820, in office 1805–20), in Russia, the Maryland mission, which had been exclusively staffed by Jesuits from the British Isles during the colonial era, 1 See Marek Inglot, S.J., How the Jesuits Survived Their Suppression: The Society of Jesus in the Russian Empire (1773–1814), trans. and ed. Daniel L. Schlafly (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s Uni- versity Press, 2015). 2 See Thomas M. McCoog, S.J., “‘Libera nos Domine?’ The Vicars Apostolic and the Suppressed/ Restored English Province of the Society of Jesus,” in Early Modern English Catholicism: Iden- tity, Memory and Counter-Reformation, ed. James Kelly and Susan Royal (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 81–101; Thomas J. Morrissey, S.J., “Ireland, England and the Restoration of the Society of Jesus,” in Promising Hope: Essays on the Suppression and Restoration of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, ed. Thomas M. McCoog, S.J. (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2003), 191–217; and Robert A. Maryks and Jonathan Wright, eds., Jesuit Survival and Restora- tion: A Global History, 1773–1900 (Leiden: Brill, 2015). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��9 | doi:�0.��63/978900439484�_00�0 <UN> 192 Curran JESUIT MISSIONS IN THE UNITED STATES 1830s Map by Jim Coombs NEW YORK Maps and GIS Librarian BRITISH Missouri State University NORTH AMERICA MICHIGAN New York PENNSYLVANIA Goshenhoppen INDIANA Conewago Philadelphia NEW OHIO JERSEY Bohemia Frederick Baltimore Annapolis Georgetown Tuckahoe Washington D.C. White Marsh DELAWARE MARYLAND Newtown St. Inigoes KENTUCKY VIRGINIA Bardstown Figure 8.1 The Maryland mission in the early nineteenth century By permission of Jim Coombs, Maps & GIS Librarian, Missouri State University now became an international mission. Jesuits were sent to, or volunteered for, Maryland from countries throughout Europe, from Poland to the traditional staffers in the United Kingdom. Both of these distinguishing characteristics— large landholdings and ethnic pluralism—became factors that led to the ap- pointment of Peter Kenney (1779–1841) as the first visitor to the mission. As historian Emmet Larkin (1927–2012) has noted, Kenney was the key figure in the reorganization of the restored Society in two countries: Ireland and the United States.3 In the latter, he was twice visitor, from 1819 to 1821, and again from 1830 to 1833. On both occasions, Kenney eminently fulfilled the role of visitor as set out in the Constitutions and the legislation of the general congre- gations: as reformer, unifier, revitalizer of the spiritual life, and path-setter.4 In America, his work profoundly shaped the missions that became the provinces of Maryland and Missouri. Kenney, through his establishment of the 3 Foreword to Thomas Morrissey, S.J., As One Sent: Peter Kenney, S.J., 1779–1841 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996), v–vi. 4 See Robert Danieluk, S.J., “The Role and Significance of Father Visitor in the Society of Jesus” in this volume. <UN>.

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