Portugal not only did not admit them, but issued a furious decree against the Bull. Not till fifteen years later did the Jesuits enter that country, and then their first work was to inter the yet unburied remains of their arch-enemy Pombal and to admit four of his great-grandsons into one of their colleges. Brazil, Portugal's dependency, imitated the bitterness of the mother country. The Emperor of Austria was favorable, but the spirit fostered among the people by his predecessor, Joseph, was still rampant and prevented the introduction of the Society into his domains. But, on the whole, the act of the Pope was acclaimed everywhere throughout the world. So Pacca wrote to Consalvi.
Of course there was an uproar in non-Catholic countries. In England, even some Catholics were in arms against the Bull. One individual, writing in the "Catholic Directory" of 1815, considered it to be "the downfall of the Catholic religion." A congress in which a number of Englishmen participated was held a few years later at Aix-la-Chapelle to protest against the re-establishment of the Order. Fortunately it evoked a letter from the old Admiral Earl St. Vincent which runs as follows: "I have heard with indignation that Sir J. C. Hippisley, a member of Parliament, is gone to the Congress. I therefore beseech you to cause this letter to be laid before his Holiness the Pope as a record of my opinion that we are not only obliged to that Order for the most useful discoveries of every description, but that they are now necessary for the education of Catholic youth throughout the civilized world." With the exception of John Milner, all the vicars Apostolic of England were strongly opposed to the restitution of the Society in that country.
The United States was at war with England just then, and it happened that seventeen days before the Bull was issued Father Grassi and his fellow-Jesuits were witnessing from the windows of Georgetown College the bombardment of Washington by the British fleet. They saw the city in flames, and fully expected that the college would be taken by the enemy, but to their great delight they saw the forty ships on the following morning hoist their anchors and, one by one, drop down the Potomac. They did not, of course, know what was going on in Rome, but as soon as the news of the re-establishment arrived in America, Father Fenwick, the future Bishop of Boston, who was then working in St. Peter's Church, New York, wrote about it to Father Grassi, who was President of Georgetown. The letter is dated December 21, 1814 and runs as follows:
"Rev. and Dear Father,
Te Deum Laudamus, Te Dominum confitemur!
The Society of Jesus is then re-established! That long-insulted Society! The Society which has been denounced as the corrupter of youth, the inculcator of unsound, unchristian and lax morality! That Society which has been degraded by the Church itself, rejected by her ministers, outlawed by her kings and insulted by her laity! Restored throughout the world and restored by a public Bull of the Sovereign Pontiff! Hitherto cooped up in a small corner of the world, and not allowed to extend herself, lest the nations of the earth, the favorites of heaven, should inhale the poison of her pestiferous breath, she is now called forth, as the only plank left for the salvation of a shipwrecked philosophered world; the only restorer of ecclesiastical discipline and sound morality; the only dependence of Christianity for the renewal of correct principles and the diffusion of piety! It is then so. What a triumph! How glorious to the Society! How confounding to the enemies! Gaudeamus in Domino, diem festum celebrantes! If any man will say after that, that God is not a friend of the Society, I shall pronounce him without hesitation a liar.
"I embrace, dear Sir, the first leisure moments after the receipt of your letter, to forward you my congratulations on the great and glorious tidings you have recently received from Europe — tidings which should exhilarate the heart of every true friend of Christianity and of the propagation of the Gospel; tidings particularly grateful to this country, and especially to the College of which you are rector, which will hereafter be able to proceed secundum regulam et Institutum."
A word about this distinguished American Jesuit may not be out of place here. He was born in the ancestral manor of the Fenwicks, in old St. Mary's County, Maryland, and was a lineal descendant of Cuthbert Fenwick who was distinguished among the first Catholic colonists by his opposition to Lewger, Calvert's secretary, then assailing the rights of the Church in Maryland. When Georgetown College opened its doors, Benedict Fenwick and his brother Enoch were among its first students. After finishing the course, he took upon himself what his old admirer, the famous Father Stonestreet, calls "the painful but self-improving duties of the class room," and was professor of Humanities for three years. Later he began a course of theology at St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, but he left in order to become a Jesuit. The Fenwicks, both in England and America had been always closely identified with the Society, and when the news came that it was about to be resuscitated, Benedict and Enoch were chosen with four other applicants to be the corner stones of the first novitiate in the United States of North America. He was ordained on June 11, 1808, in Trinity Church, Georgetown, D. C., by the Jesuit Bishop Neale, coadjutor of Archbishop Carroll, and was immediately sent to New York with Father Kohlmann to prepare that diocese for the coming of its first bishop Dr. Concanen. Kohlmann himself had been named for the see, but the Pontiff had yielded to the entreaties of Father General not to deprive the still helpless Society of such a valuable workman; hence, Father Richard Luke Concanen, a Dominican, was appointed in his stead.
Kohlmann and Fenwick were welcomed with great enthusiasm in New York which had suffered much from the various transients who had from time to time officiated there. Several distinguished converts were won over to the faith, and an attempt was made to influence the famous free-thinker, Tom Paine, but the unfortunate wretch died blaspheming. It was Kohlmann and Fenwick who established the New York Literary Institute on the site of the present St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was successful enough to attract the sons of the most distinguished families of the city and merited the commendation of such men as the famous governor of New York, De Witt Clinton, and of Governor Thompkins who was subsequently Vice-President of the United States. At the same time, they were building old St. Patrick's, which was to become the cathedral of the new bishop. Bishop Concanen never reached New York, and when his successor Bishop Connolly arrived in 1814, Father Fenwick was his consolation and support in the many bitter trials that had to be undergone in those turbulent days. He was made vicar general and when he was sent to Georgetown to be president of the college in 1817, it was against the strong protest and earnest entreaties of the bishop, who, it may be said in passing, regretted exceedingly the closing of the Literary Institute, — a feeling shared by every American Jesuit. The reason for so doing is given by Hughes (History of the Soc. of Jesus in North America, I, ii, 945).
While Fenwick was in Georgetown, Charleston, South Carolina, was in an uproar ecclesiastically. The people were in open schism, and Archbishop Maréchal of Baltimore, in spite of his antagonism to the Society appealed to the superior of the Jesuits for some one to bring order out of the chaos. Fenwick was sent, and such was his tact, good judgment and kindness, that he soon mastered the situation and the diocese was at peace when the new bishop, the distinguished John England, arrived. Strange to say, Bishop England had the same prejudice as Bishop Concanen, against the Society; a condition of mind that may be explained by the fact that it had been suppressed by the highest authority in the Church, and that even educated men were ignorant of the causes that had brought about the disaster. But Fenwick soon disabused the bishop. Indeed, he remained as Vicar General of Charleston until 1822, and when he was recalled to Georgetown, Bishop England, at first, absolutely refused to let him go.
In a funeral oration pronounced over Fenwick, later by Father Stonestreet he said in referring to the Charleston troubles; "Difficulties had arisen between the French and Anglo-Irish portions of the congregation, each insisting it should be preached to in its own tongue; each restive at remaining in the sacred temple while the word of God was announced in the language of the other. The good Father, nothing daunted by the scene of contrariety before him, ascends the pulpit, opens his discourse in both languages, rapidly alternates the tongues of La Belle France and of the Anglo-Saxon, and by his ardent desire to unite the whole community in the bonds of charity, astonishes, softens, wins and harmonizes the hearts of all. A lasting peace was restored which still continues."
Bishop Cheverus, who was then at Boston, was subsequently called to France to be Archbishop of Bordeaux and cardinal. Father Fenwick, without being consulted, was appointed to the vacant see. In fact, the first news he had of the promotion was when the Bulls were in his hands, so that no means of protesting was possible. He was consecrated on November 1, 1825, and his friend Bishop England travelled all the way from Charleston to assist as one of the Consecrators. At that time the diocese of Boston was synonymous with New England, but it had only ten churches, two of which were for Indians. Fenwick, however, set to work in his usual heroic fashion. He was particularly fond of the Indians, and bravely fought their battle against the dishonest whites. As the red men were the descendants of the Abenakis to whom the old Jesuits had brought the Faith, there was a family feeling in his defense of them. The same sentiment of kinship prompted him to establish a newspaper which he called "The Jesuit." It was a defiance of the bigotry of New England, of which there were to be many serious manifestations. "The Jesuit" was the pioneer of Catholic journalism in the United States.