American Jesuits and the China Mission: The Woodstock Letters, 1900–1969

Abstract

The Society of Jesus, otherwise known as the “Jesuits,” is widely recognized for its long and accomplished history in the Celestial Empire. Boasting the largest number of missionaries in the Roman Catholic Church, practically since the order’s founding in 1540, it was also the first Catholic order to establish itself permanently in China (Macau, 1562). Although interrupted by the Suppression of the Society throughout the world in 1773,1 it was reconstituted as the “New Society” in 1814 and quickly returned to its former ministries scattered throughout the world. By 1841, French Jesuits had returned to China, followed by the Irish in 1926, and, for the first time, in 1928, by Americans from the California Province.2 Collaboration between the Jesuits and the Chinese people was extensive and productive from the beginnings of the mission until the early years of the 1950s, when the Jesuits were temporarily compelled to move their operations out of mainland China to Hong Kong and the Philippines. The fruits of this cooperation have received much scholarly attention.