Jesuit goals weren’t purely spiritual
Were Jesuit missionaries religious or political? The answer is both, said Samuel Gregg at Catholic World Report, in a review of Bronwen
McShea’s Apostles of Empire: The Jesuits and New France. McShea shows how “aggressive leadership from Jesuits in France and North America combined with carefully constructed relationships with France’s political and economic elites resulted in substantial success, both in terms of conversions to Catholicism and advancing France’s strategic interests.” Their main goal was conversion. But they also wanted to introduce “courtly French aesthetics and ideas of civilité to North Americans”.
