An Interview with Fr. Daniel Gustafson, S.J.

by Benjamin Fishbein

Fr. Daniel Gustafson, S.J.

Fr. Daniel Gustafson (CAS ‘11) is a member of the U.S. East Province of the Society of Jesus. He is currently getting his doctorate at Boston College. He is here at Georgetown for the Fall Semester doing archival research for his thesis, which focuses on American Catholic political engagement in the Early Republic. GJOH Blog Editor Benjamin Fishbein sat down with Fr. Gustafson to discuss his research, his role as both a Jesuit priest and a historian of Jesuit/Catholic history, and his experiences at Georgetown. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What research are you doing here in Georgetown? How does it fit in with the previous work you've been doing? 

I'm here doing dissertation research. I'm in my fourth year of a doctoral program in theology at Boston College, with a focus on Church history. My dissertation will focus on the social and political engagement of American Catholics in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War. Other scholars have already proven that Catholics were, among all religious groups, the most pro-Revolution and supportive of early U.S. political projects. 

The explanation that I've always seen given is religious liberty: that after centuries of English oppression, Catholics finally had the promise of religious freedom, and so supported the Revolution. I agree with that, but want to add that I think there was a democratic instinct within American Catholic ecclesiology during that time period that sort of hardwired Catholics to be supportive of this new democratic political system. Now, this is a weird point in time for Catholics to be pro-democracy, given that the French Revolution is happening right then. There were Popes denouncing democracy almost simultaneous to what I'm looking at in the American context. 

So I'm going to try and position American Catholics between the American mainstream, which was very suspicious of Catholicism, and sort of the global Catholic perspective, which would have been very suspicious of democracy. I want to locate American Catholics as pro-democracy and still Catholic, obviously. Yeah, so I am  looking at the Church and Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the War of 1812, Westward Expansion, etc. For doing early U.S. Catholic research, the archives at Georgetown are among the best collections one could find. I am super happy that I have gotten the flexibility from Boston College to be here for a semester, and the archivists here in Lauinger have been just phenomenal. Really, really helpful, and great to work with. Several years ago, I did what's called a Licentiate in Sacred Theology at Boston College, and part of that was doing a 100-page thesis. I did that in Church history and wrote on Jesuit slaveholding. That was obviously much more focused, but it was largely the same time period I'm working on now, and I am now looking to expand my analysis beyond simply the topic of slavery.

Would you say that your work has a focus on the Jesuits specifically, or is it just about American Catholics in general?

The short answer is yes, there is a focus on the Jesuits, because at the time of the Revolutionary War, almost all of the priests in the U.S. were Jesuits. This is also during the suppression of the Jesuits, but they were still formed as Jesuits, worked as Jesuits, and generally speaking, didn't change their day to day lives a whole lot once the suppression arrived here. I'm very intentionally trying to avoid the dissertation simply being about priests and bishops. So I am trying to tie in other voices of lay people, such as Elizabeth Ann Seton. At this point in time, a lot of parishes were legally owned by trustees, a group of lay people at each parish. I want to have as diverse a set of voices from the sources as I can, with the catch that those who left enough written records that have lasted this long are often pretty wealthy and socially influential people. So I'm trying to keep a broad pool of voices with the limitation that I can only work with the sources I can find. 

What has it been like to work at the Special Collections? You talked a little bit about it, but are there any sources that have surprised you a lot or any unexpected discoveries? 

I've done a couple of previous projects at the Special Collections here, and so some of the folks that work there I already knew, which was really helpful to me to see them again. I think the sources I've found the most moving to work with have been the letters between John Carroll and Charles Plowden, who was an English Jesuit. They taught together in Italy right before the suppression began there. They were both kicked out, and basically lost contact with each other for a long, long time, and then out of the blue, right as the Revolutionary War is ending, Carroll gets a letter from Plowden. I've not seen that first letter, but Carroll’s response to him is just gushing, that he's delighted to hear from his old friend. The affection and esteem and shared memories are just oozing out of these pages. 

It's really helpful for me to compare what Carroll is telling Plowden with what Carroll is saying and doing publicly. With Plowden, it's more of the private thoughts, the behind-the-scenes perspective that he's sharing with his best friend. He’s looking for priests to cover these little Catholic settlements that are popping up all over the country and expanding westward and southward. He's just scrambling for priests to attend to these congregations that are pleading with him to send a priest to them, and some of these guys were scoundrels, to put that very briefly. One seems to have forged his letters of recommendation from a superior or bishop back in Europe. A few times, it seems like Plowden is telling Carroll, “I've heard bad things about this guy; you might not want to send him out hundreds of miles away where he can't keep an eye on him.” Carroll will write back: “No, no, no, we had a great meeting with him. He's very zealous, he has adequate learning, he'll be great.” Almost unfailingly, in the next letter Carroll sends back to Plowden, in so many words, he says, "You're right, the guy was kind of a jerk. I had to suspend his faculties. This was a bad move on my part. We'll try again next time.” But yes, I think the candor and the honesty in the decades of friendship really puts flesh and blood around the bones of what could otherwise be sort of dry historical documents. It is incredible to see Carroll’s own personal concerns and motivations alongside what he is doing in his official capacity. ​

I want to talk a little bit about the intersection between history and theology. It's a theology doctorate that you're doing, but it's also in Church history. I know you were a theology major at Georgetown. When you were at Georgetown, what kind of theology were you mainly studying? Was it intersecting with history a lot? 

Actually, not a whole lot. My concentration was ethics. So I took a lot of classes with Fr. Christopher Steck. He was my dorm chaplain my freshman year in New South. And so I got to know him, I took one of his intermediate level classes as a sophomore, and then a few more classes over the next couple of years. I just loved those classes and really liked learning from Fr. Steck. I had never taken a theology class before getting here, so Problem of God, my first semester of Freshman year, was my first encounter with theology. Even becoming aware of the different disciplines within theology was very much a growing edge for me. A lot of my focus from my undergrad degree was more on the contemporary intersection of religion and politics, because I was also a government major. I looked for a lot of connections in both my government classes back to religion, and then in theology, connections to political engagement. I realize that that's largely what I'm doing now, simply in a different time period. So in some ways I haven't gotten too far from my interests here, but I’m looking sort of at how folks engaged these questions earlier, and then how might that provide us with some suggestions or guidance or answers in our own contemporary times. 

Looking at all these disciplines: history, theology, politics. How have you sort of found your place navigating them? 

I'm very aware of the interweaving of those disciplines, even in how I explain my dissertation. The explanation I just gave was, I would say, more properly historical. I think the theological question that I'm asking in that project is: how do one's ecclesiology and political context influence each other? How does the political system in which one lives impact how one understands the nature and functioning of the Church? Conversely, how does one's experience of the life and functioning structure of the Church impact how one engages one's political milieu? I think that has huge resonance and relevance in our own times. I mean, you could look at anything political happening now. How do folks vote based on different denominations or religious affiliations? I think that how one understands what the Church is or ought to be does influence what one does in terms of political engagement. I'm hoping to offer an example of an approach to Catholicism and democracy from history. I think that’s the main theological contribution of my dissertation.

I think that you often see the reverse of that. Often, people talk about how people's politics influence their theology. But that's interesting to start from ecclesiology and then see how that informs political engagement. 

I think that influence can go both directions, and I think that I could probably argue that the folks I'm studying and a lot of priests and bishops in that time, that their location as Americans does influence their approach to ecclesiology. Even in some of the back and forth between Plowden and Carroll. At one point, Carroll remarks, "I have adopted the language of a republican.” That seemed to be in the context of some disagreement about a couple of Church issues that they were writing back and forth about. I think there is, in some ways, no view from nowhere. We're all impacted and formed by where we live, our time and place, and all of that. So, to some degree, is the influence of our politics on our approach to the Church inevitable? Maybe. I'd like to think the gospel would remain our first guide and foundation, but I think for any person, at any point in time and any context, some mix of all those factors winds up shaping our whole worldview.

How did your Jesuit formation shape your approach to your research and scholarship? 

At this point, I have spent entirely too much time in school. After finishing here, I was in the Novitiate for two years. Then I went to Loyola University of Chicago for three years for a Master's of Philosophy and one year’s worth of theology. I spent two years teaching high school at Fordham Prep in the Bronx, then I went to Boston College for a Masters of Divinity and this Licentiate in Sacred Theology that I mentioned. Certainly, for philosophy, I had met the two core philosophy classes here and a couple of political theory classes for the Government major, but getting to the master's level, I was in class with doctoral students who have bachelor's degrees and master's degrees in philosophy. Really, my only way of keeping up was careful reading of the text. What's this saying? What's the argument being made? What's the author's perspective or ultimate end goal? Just carefully attending to a text was my only way of staying afloat in that program. 

That approach carried through to my two master's degrees in theology at B.C., letting a text speak for itself rather than me just trying to cherry-pick. And then, as I've gotten into doctoral studies now, I think it's also a matter of justice towards these figures in history. Anything I write about them, I want it to be so that they could recognize themselves in what I write. I think there’s sort of a spirituality of historical scholarship that I am in relationship with the people whose works I read, whose documents and letters I'm engaging with. 

On a more theological-spiritual level, if we take the communion of saints seriously, we are literally still connected with them by virtue of our shared baptism. More temporally, maybe a little less spiritually, but I think as a matter of justice, interpersonally with them, I need to be an honest reporter of what they're saying and not warp their words into what I want them to have said. I think about that personal connection with the historical figures a lot. I am in a relationship with them, and whatever I produce by virtue of this research, it's deeply, deeply important and necessary to me that they would see themselves in what I write. 

Building off of that, how do you see your academic work fit into the mission of the Society, and more broadly, your priestly ministry and the work of the Church in general? 

Starting most basically, a lot of the folks I'm writing about in the dissertation are Jesuits, either during the suppression or after the restoration. I've loved Jesuit history ever since I was a student here. Getting to, one, look at my predecessor's works myself is just personally gratifying and very exciting. Two, I think getting to share that with a broader scholarly community is important and part of the work of any historian, but I feel some skin in the game, like these are my guys I'm writing about in some instances, and that is very gratifying. In terms of deeper level work in the Society and the work of the Church, the goal is to be a teacher. 

I think teaching is profoundly ministerial. It is not exclusively priestly; I would say that many professors and teachers do ministry. To help students find their own passions, find things they care about, and what sets their own hearts and minds on fire. That's God. God's doing that, setting on fire. This is a topic that has set my own heart and imagination on fire. I think we could all point to teachers we've had whose passion gets us excited, too. This is where my passion is, and hopefully that's contagious. I hope that example of having found my passion will inspire future students to go and want to find their own. I think, too, that ongoing relationships with students can be deeply pastoral. The foundations for those relationships get laid in a classroom.

You said your Licentiate was about Jesuit slaveholding. What was that like researching that darker side of the institution that you're also a part of at the same time? 

That was certainly heavier than what I'm doing now. But if I love and take pride in the more triumphant chapters of Jesuit history, I think it is a matter of intellectual honesty. I need to be equally willing to engage the darker, heavier chapters as well. The basic goal of the thesis was to try and get inside the minds of these Jesuits who were enslaving fellow human beings, on their own terms. What did they think they were doing? I think it has been helpful to broader conversations about reckoning with the legacy of Jesuit slaveholding. 

Within the last year or so, the East Coast Provincial Joe O'Kefee formed a task force on the Jesuit works in southern Maryland, which is right where the concentration of Jesuit slaveholding was. This task force is looking at both the history of our involvement there, the operations that we've got there presently, and how we might document and share this ugly part of our history with people alive today. That project led me to spend probably five weeks or so here, in the summer of 2019, in the archives of the Special Collections, indexing Black parishioner records from one of the parishes Jesuits used to work at in Southern Maryland. A lot of the Black parishioners there were descended from people we enslaved generations earlier. 

As this conversation on Jesuit slaveholding has gotten more widespread, a lot of people alive today who know they're descended from people enslaved by Jesuits are diving more into their own genealogical research. And so, the index I made of all these Black parishioner records, I know people who have been using it for their own genealogy. I was even able to meet a couple of those people. Is it awkward for me as a Jesuit to meet someone whose ancestors were enslaved by my spiritual ancestors? Yes, I found that uncomfortable. And yet here we are together, hopefully telling a better and fuller truth than the lies that were implicitly told by my forebears to their forebears. I hope there is a reckoning and a righting of those previous evils in a small way. Getting to see how these questions remain alive and this history is still active is very exciting. Hopefully, we can make a better future than the ugly past that I've spent time diving into. 

Here at Georgetown, you're not just doing research; you're also engaging in the Jesuit community and the student body. How has that been like coming to a new university situation, but also one where you spent your undergrad years, and being on the other side of that relationship in the Jesuit community and working with the students in a pastoral way? 

It's been wonderful. My vocation story, probably in its shortest form, boils down to hearing Jesuit homilies. Getting now as a priest to preach to college kids, whether at B.C. or here, is a profound privilege. I absolutely love it. When I got here in September, I was very aware that I had not said mass on campus yet. I was ordained in June of 2021, so I’d been a priest for over four years and still hadn't had a chance to say Mass on Georgetown's campus. I love saying Mass. I love preaching. For me, being pastorally involved is simply not negotiable. And so, I knew I wanted to be on the mass rotation, helping out at daily masses. I'm on the rotation for confessions on Wednesdays. I knew I wanted to, and getting to do those things for the first time here was just a delight. 

I can still remember homilies I'd heard as a college student in Dahlgren. I remember serving mass there on a regular basis when I was a student. I remember dropping in there to pray about my vocational discernment. All of those memories are sort of seeping out of the walls of Dahlgren Chapel for me, and so getting to preside at Mass there now is just a joy. Getting to know the students who are coming to mass, I think back to conversations that my friends and I had with the priests who were saying mass for us as students. It strikes me that, in broad strokes, the spiritual concerns of students now, whether Georgetown or B.C., are, in fact, not that much unlike where my friends and I were at when we were undergrads. Getting to be a little bit of an encouragement or support to students here and at B.C. is phenomenally life-giving for me. 

What advice would you give to Georgetown undergraduates studying history?

Something I've been thinking about this last month or so, working in Special Collections, is that at some point, I have to let the text speak for itself. I alerted to that in an earlier answer. Depending on what I open one day to the next, it won't be immediately apparent what it is. What is this book? What's going on here? Is it a record? Is it a diary? Is it meeting notes? Why was this thing saved? I have found it important and helpful to be patient and let the source tell me what's going on. Whether for research or for graduate school, something else I've been super aware of in this last month is languages. My English is fine, my Spanish is good. My reading of Latin, French, and German is passable. But, I spent most of today looking at sources in Italian. Any language you can get down will only make the research all the easier. Being able to read something for yourself is a totally different experience of research, and so I would commend language study to anyone looking at any future research level of study in history. It makes a phenomenal difference. 

There is something else I would encourage anyone looking at research now or later or higher studies, and this is parroting from a professor of mine who is himself a Georgetown undergrad alum, Seth Meehan, who now works in the libraries of Boston College. He said, “Any good history project needs to end with ‘so what?’” If it's simply, "Here's a point of historical curiosity from some bygone era," it might make for a fun story, but it is better when historians can answer the “so what?” question. Why should I care? How is this relevant to real people alive today? I think good history should address that question. I try to stay aware of that for anything I've written, especially in Church history.