Sunday night at eight, the phone rings. Fr. George Lane, SJ, picks it up, listens, and asks a couple of questions. The family who clean the offices at Loyola Press are calling to report that a washroom is leaking, flooding t he floor and the offices below. Fr. Lane says he will be right over and heads out for his car. In fifteen minutes he gets there.
Plumbing is not in the job description of the director of Loyola Press. Neither are leaky roofs, flooding basements, or security alarms at 3 a.m. Nor are a lot of the things that knock on the door or ring the phone or arrive in the morning mail. But th ey are part of the job.
Fr. George Lane, SJ, enjoys being director of Loyola Press, a position he has held since 1989.
Loyola Press stretches a half block along North Ashland Avenue in Chicago. Its neighbors are a small electronics factory, Ford and Mazda dealerships, two banks, a pet store, a Mexican restaurant, a Burger King, and, on the side streets, apartments and single family homes. Busses and trucks rumble past, and the Ravenswood El screeches by every five minutes. Looking at the press from across the street, one can see that it was built in stages in the building styles of different eras. It is a straightforw ard, functional building. But it has a mission.
Loyola Press's mission is to publish. It creates books to teach, to inspire, to encourage, to challenge the intellectual and spiritual lives of its readers. Most of its books are grade-school religion and English texts, but it also publishes books of g eneral interest, called tradebooks.
Loyola Press's mission started in 1912, when William Lyons, SJ, began publishing pamphlets at St. Ignatius High School. In 1925 he bought a small press on Ashland and the following year printed his first bestseller, Religion: Doctrine and Practice, whi ch saw 25 printings. What was by now Loyola University Press survived the depression and began concentrating on high school Latin, history, and English textbooks. When the Jesuit schools nationally began to standardize their curricula in the 1940s, Loyola became their major publisher.
In 1943, the press began publishing a grade-school series, Voyages in English; this quickly became the press's major product. A religion textbook series, Christ Our Life, began in 1973.
In the 1960s, the high school market faded as the Jesuit schools stopped following a common curriculum. Most of the press's business now is in grade-school language arts and religion books.
Today, Loyola Press is working to rearticulate its mission in light of a number of changes. As part of its new self-understanding, this year it stopped using "university" in its name; it has not had an official relationship with Loyola Univer sity in Chicago since 1940.
While the education world moves back to basics in language arts, Loyola never left the basics. Most publishers did, with a movement called "whole language," which did not emphasize phonics, grammar, punctuation, and correctness. That is chang ing fast.
"The impetus for this change is coming from parents," explains Austin Tighe, Editor-in-Chief of Textbooks; "they look at the test scores and feel they have to do something, the schools have failed them." Under Tighe's leadership, Lo yola introduced a new phonics series last year; that series is beginning to take off.
Loyola Press is also uncovering new needs in religious education. In October 1995, soon after starting at Loyola Press, Marketing Director Terry Locke began studying basic questions: Who are Loyola's customers; What are they asking for; and, Is Loyola's product meeting their needs? Before investing in a revision or some new program, she wanted to find out from the people who used or might use the books what they thought.
Since then, Locke and Tighe have conducted a series of discussions asking religious educators what is happening and what they need to do their jobs. One common thread in these discussions is the need to integrate the whole family into the catechetical process.
"Directors of religious education throughout the country are telling us they need materials that will help bring parents, grandparents, young children, preschool children, together with children in school and will help them build communities," ; Terry Locke explains. "What happens to children between baptism and the time they start religious education? They are kind of lost. And parents are lost; parents do not know how to share their faith with young children."
Another need is catechist formation. Many young parents are searching for basic religious knowledge to share with their children. The teachers in many parish programs are searching too. Many of them were educated after Vatican II and don't have a lot o f knowledge of religious basics.
Another need is for an approach to religious education that goes beyond the school model. If the students perceive religion as simply another school-related task, then they feel "at the end of eighth grade or the end of high school they have gradu ated from faith formation," Terry Locke says; "that is really a stifling thought." The response to that is to integrate faith formation into the community, to make it part of peoples' lives. To provide materials for those who help children in that faith formation is the work of religious publishers.
Another trend in religious publishing today makes that task more difficult. Most Catholic publishers have been bought by secular publishers, who measure success by profit. They cannot take risks, nor can they publish materials that will not pay their s hareholders a profit. And they live with the reality that if they become unprofitable, they may be spun off or shut down. Loyola, as a Jesuit-owned ministry, can ask the larger questions of what faith formation requires and how it can do more to serve tho se needs.
Tighe makes that point with a smile, "Given my previous experience, I like the idea that the Jesuits are probably not going to be taken over by a larger corporation."
The tradebook division is also seeking to update its mission. One line of tradebooks, Jesuit Way, serves Jesuit interests with biography, history, and spirituality. Loyola Press Books addresses wider spiritual concerns. Wild Onion Books are a service to the local community; "wild onion" translates the native word "Chicago."
Jeremy Langford, Acquisitions Editor for Tradebooks, sees a changed demand for religious publishing, which became a hot publishing field several years ago: "There are lots of people out there seeking tradition and seeking a deeper understanding of what it means to be human and what it means to be a family person, and seeking to understand of all the aspects of work life, family life, married life, in our society."
To reach people who ask religious questions but may not feel connected to a church, Langford is beginning a new Seeker Series. The first volume, written by Mitch Finley, is The Seeker's Guide to Being Catholic; it is slated for publication in spring 19 97.
All of this work to rearticulate Loyola Press's mission and to serve today's Church seems a long way from broken pipes and midnight alarms. And it all makes for long days for Fr. Lane, who has directed the press since 1989. But it also makes for exciti ng days, filled with energy, ideas, enthusiasm, and commitment of the 48 people who are Loyola Press.
And it helps bring Loyola Press into line with the Jesuits' recent general congregation, which recognized the need to speak the language that today's world understands: "We cannot speak to others if the religious language we use is completely fore ign to them."
Page maintained by Richard VandeVelde, S.J., vande@math.luc.edu. Copyright(c) . Created: Thursday, September 12, 1996 Updated: 5/25/2000