Lamar,
it would please me greatly if you would be able to provide with your reference source material whereby you concluded that the Jesuits did indeed own slaves.
You might want to check these out.
Georgetown University American Studies Department. This archive contains personal, legal, and financial documents produced on six Jesuit-owned plantation in Maryland between 1650 and 1838.
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/tamlit/info/cepacs.html
The Jesuit Plantation Project. Memorial to Missouri Province, Father Peter Kenny, S.J. A letter. "In determining the places to which the coloured [sic] servants belong, the visitor meant to have it understood that as the missioner at St. Ferdinand has for his immediate superior, the local superior of the farm, whether he be or be not master of novices, so the farm is bound to supply him with a servant, who is to be removed & changed as the superior of the farm may direct, provided another be substituted in his place. The missioner for the residence at St. Ferdinand acquires no other right in the servant, than the services which he renders to him, as long as he is allowed to remain with him. The visitor takes this occasion of recording the satisfaction which he experiensed [sic], & the edification which he received on witnessing in each of our houses of the Missouri, the good sandust, [sic] industry & christian piety of all the coloured [sic] servants of both sexes. He considers that as a matter of credit to our fathers & of much edification to the faithful in general, & it is the more appreciated by the visitor, as our houses of Missouri are the only ones, where no complaints have been made of the slaves. To preserve so great a good as he exhorts the fathers to preserve every where the same paternal & yet vigilant conduct towards those creatures, whose happiness here & hereafter so much depends on the treatment they derive from their masters. All our priests & nonpriests will understand, that is strictly & solemny [sic] forbidden them to inflict any species of corporal chastisement on a female slave, or ever to threaten by word or act, that they will themselves personally chastise them. Should such correction ever become necessary, lay persons may be employed to do it. Neither are the priests to inflict corporal chastisement on the male servants, but this when necessary, it may be allowed to lay brothers who have authority over them. By this prohibition priests are prevented from administering to any one corporal chastisement, however well deserved, which could be considered severe punishment. But though they should as much as possible ever attain from an act so little consonant to their sacred character, it is not here intended, to interdict that slight correction which is sometimes necessary to be given to boys & youth, who are not yet 21 years of age. The visitor earnestly hopes, that the college of St. Louis will soon imitate the example given at the farm of the novice ship by providing separate houses or chambers for each family of servants, & what is still more necessary, separate places for the unmarried males & females.
http://www.georgetown.edu/departments/amer-studies/jpp/126_6.html (link no longer active)
The book titled
"Jesuit Slaveholding in Maryland, 1717-1838, by Thomas J. Murphy S.J. Murphy bemoans the apologetic manner in which most Catholic historians--the overwhelming majority of whom have been priests--have traditionally ignored the reality that for nearly two centuries, Jesuits in Maryland owned human beings. "Mainstream historians" Albert J. Raboteau and Eugene Genovese have remained almost entirely uninterested in the issue of Catholic slaveholding. Jesuits serving in Maryland in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries had their own unique motives for slaveholding. The community also had unique motives when, in 1838, it chose to abandon the institution of slavery, not by manumitting its 272 slaves, but by selling them to two sugar plantation owners in Louisiana. The Jesuits had rich philosophical and theological traditions to draw from when justifying their decision to use slave labor on their plantations.
http://jsr.as.wvu.edu/2002/Reviews/Farrelly.htm
The Jesuit-owned Santa Cruz farm had 1,205 slaves. The Benedictines and the Carmelites also acquired properties and large numbers of slaves. "The monasteries are full of slaves," cried 19th century Brazilian abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco. Many of the cleric who protested the abuse of slaves had a "low regard for Africans" and "held that discipline, chastisement, and work were the only way to overcome the slaves' superstition, indolence, and lack of civility."
http://www.nathanielturner.com/religionandcolonialbrazil.htm
Do you still wish to maintain that Jesuits never owned slaves?
Sincerely,
Infosponge
