The St. louis Jesuits are back. The composers of the most popular Catholic liturgical music of the '70s and '80s plan to release their first album in twenty years this fall. The new hymns will reflect the mature perspectives of the authors in addition to their trademark lyrics based on Scripture and music that people can sing to connect with their faith.
Composers and musicians (clockwise from top) Bob Dufford, SJ, Roc O'Connor, SJ, Dan Schutte, and John Foley, SJ, are the "fathers" of contemporary litur-gical music, according to many. They are deep into plans to record the first "St. Louis Jesuits" album in twenty years. | 
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Members of the group—Bob Dufford, SJ, John Foley, SJ, Roc O'Connor, SJ, and Dan Schutte—spent Thanksgiving week at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Portland, Oregon, collaborating on new music and testing the merits of a reunion that has been three years in the making.
"The album will be worth the wait," said Paulette McCoy, manager of liturgical resources for Oregon Catholic Press, after having heard previews of about twenty songs.
"There are some wonderful songs for funerals, some for prayers, and some that are rock-sounding. There's something for everyone." Vocals will be handled by all four and a chorus; instrumentation will be mostly piano and guitar but augmented with some bass, flutes, drums, oboes, and strings.
The St. Louis Jesuits have been discussing the idea of a new album since 2000, when they sang "City of God" together at the National Association of Pastoral Musicians conference in Washington, D.C., said O'Connor, a theology professor and liturgist at Creighton University. It was the first time they had sung together in sixteen years, and something magical happened.
"People went wild, and that was very gratifying," he said. "But the experience of singing together was more profound. That in itself was saying something to us, and we need to listen to it." Organizing the reunion and coordinating schedules took more than two years.
In their heyday, the St. Louis Jesuits were a sort of religious equivalent of the Beatles, although they never toured or performed concerts. Instead, they conducted liturgical music workshops and spoke at conferences. This surprised some people.
"One of our letters was from a girl who wanted to tour with the St. Louis Jesuit choir," said Dufford.
Their most popular album, Earthen Vessels, has sold more than a million copies since its release in 1975, and their work has been translated into a dozen languages, including Russian, Croatian, and Finnish. Hymns such as "Be Not Afraid," "One Bread, One Body," "Lift Up Your Hearts," and "City of God" appear in the missals and hymnals used by 60 percent of the nation's 18,000 Catholic churches and numerous Protestant churches as well. The last album they did as a group, The Steadfast Love, was released in 1984; all four members have since recorded solo albums.
Group members said they stopped collaborating because their ministries took them in different directions." Part of it was an assignment thing," said Schutte, who left the Society in 1986 and is now composer-in-residence and music director for campus ministry at the University of San Francisco. "We were done with our studies."
"We'd worked together strongly for over ten years, and we began to ask ourselves if we could continue to be creative using the style we had developed together," said Foley, director of the Center for Liturgy at Saint Louis University. "We had by that time published a considerable body of music, and each of us was feeling the need to diversify and pursue our own new musical styles."
At the reunion meeting in Portland, members said in a group interview that the renewed collaboration felt risky.
"There was a rather long period when anything the St. Louis Jesuits released was widely used almost immediately," Foley said. "One reason was that we were one of the few sources of this kind of liturgical music.
In the early days when we started, there were perhaps ten or fifteen composers total. Today, the Center for Liturgy at Saint Louis University invites as many as 250 composers to the annual Composers Forum. There is so much diversity now."
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The albums recorded by the St. Louis Jesuits in the '70s and '80s (Neither Silver Nor Gold was their first) sold millions. Their national, even international, influence on the world of liturgical music was phenomenal.
Visit Oregon Catholic Press at www.ocp.org or call 1-800-LITURGY for information about ordering St. Louis Jesuits CDs, cassettes, sheet music, and more. |
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"We're very aware that the whole atmosphere and geography of liturgical music have changed," said Schutte. "There's so much music for people to choose from with a lot of different composers. Even if we contribute something new, how do we know it will be a contribution to people's faith?"
Dufford, on staff at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, said that he had "to let go of the idea that we will have a similar impact to what we had in 1974. The situation is so different."
Schutte, Foley, and O'Connor noted that they, too, have changed. When they wrote the original music, they were Jesuits in formation at a time of great hope in the post-Vatican II Church. Now all group members are over 50.
"We are working in a Church that is in the midst of dramatic change," said O'Connor. "We're not sure what will come of it all. Part of what drove us then was our youth. We were in our 20s and 30s. Now we have whole other things to say. What does it mean to try to address the whole Church from a perspective that has dealt with sorrow and joy over a long time?"
This more-mature perspective has advantages, they agreed. Coping with life's losses, changes, and disappointments has made them more realistic but has not deprived them of hope.
"When we met two years ago, we wanted to write music of hope," said Schutte. "We wanted to make a connection with people's prayer—to give hope to people who struggle with a feeling like it's winter."
Dufford, who fears that some current liturgical changes are turning people into spectators more than participants in the Mass, credits O'Connor for encouraging him to keep composing for a Church still in flux.
"People in Belgium call it Days of Ice: when springtime comes and there are days of cold and maybe even snow, but they know it will be spring," he said. "What we're dealing with now won't always be so."
Dufford said that since he works in a retreat center, he now composes music more for prayer than liturgy. For example, one of his hymns on the new album is a meditation on the parable of the Prodigal Son and the forgiving love of the father.
O'Connor, whose songs such as "How Glorious Your Name" are noted for their joyful lyrics and rousing musical accompaniment, said his work is changing too.
"In the past I tended to write a lot of upbeat music," said O'Connor. "When I was younger, I wanted it to be fun." Now he said he is trying to integrate thought and feeling, immanence and transcendence.
O'Connor said the renewed collaboration has shown him that "the sum of the group is greater than its parts," and he benefits from being able to bring his music to the group's members again for affirmation and constructive critiques.
"You get feedback from people you can trust," said Dufford. "You need someone with a sense of what you're doing." Members are aware of the difficulty of composing but are comfortable suggesting improvements.
For example, Dufford recalled that initially he resisted when Foley had urged some revisions in the lyrics of "Be Not Afraid" because he knew what an important hymn it would be; it had to be perfect.
"Finally, a week later, I could see what he was saying," Dufford said, adding that he then changed the song. "Be Not Afraid" is among the group's best-known hymns. It was sung for President Clinton at a prayer service before his 1992 inauguration as well as on countless humbler occasions.
Schutte said that the musical growth of all members in terms of "harmonies, rhythms, and orchestration" will be apparent on the new album.
Foley said that the reunion demonstrates that "we draw inspiration from one another. It's different when each one has presented his stuff, but it is always for the Church. There's a creative spark that's here."
However, the real question facing the group is one of mission, he said. "How do we continue to serve the music and prayer of the Church?" 
The St. Louis Jesuits saga began with handwritten songs run off on a mimeograph machine that spread from a Jesuit chapel at Saint Louis University to the whole world in the early '70s.
"We never thought we would go anywhere with this," said Bob Dufford, SJ, as he, John Foley, SJ, Roc O'Connor, SJ, and Dan Schutte recalled the accidental beginnings of the St. Louis Jesuits 30 years earlier. Several providential coincidences and a couple of casual decisions played a major role in the story.
To fill the musical void created by the Vatican II liturgical changes, Catholics of the late '60s and early '70s first turned to Protestant hymns and contemporary folk music to replace their traditional Latin hymns, said Foley. But Catholics needed liturgical music more solidly grounded in Scripture and Catholic worship traditions.
 "Each of us was taught early in our Jesuit training to love the Scripture," wrote Dan Schutte in his Company magazine story (Summer '84) about the St. Louis Jesuits. "Out of this love grew a desire to wed the words of Scripture with the power of music." The original crew: John Foley, Roc O'Connor, Dan Schutte, Tim Manion, and Bob Dufford. |
Foley started the movement by setting psalms to guitar and singing them at masses at Saint Louis University chapel for Jesuits in philosophy studies, including Dufford, O'Connor, Schutte, and Tim Manion, an early member of the group. They had started composing guitar hymns individually in their spare time and gradually became aware of their shared musical interests.
Dufford recalled hearing Foley's new music at a Good Friday service and thinking it was "really good." Schutte remembers listening to Dufford work on his song "My People" during a retreat. O'Connor played guitar but had not yet begun composing.
The music might have stayed in St. Louis had not Saint Louis University housed an institute that trained formation directors of national and international religious orders. When they heard the music, they demanded copies to take home. The young Jesuits obliged.
Schutte remembered writing the songs out by hand, mimeographing them, and setting out copies for anyone who wanted them. The young Jesuit composers also started singing at retreats and other events. They spread their music when they went on their various assignments as Jesuits. Word got out; the public wanted more.
"The music was going to people all over the world, and it was all hand written," said Dufford.
In 1973, the composers faced a turning point. They were finishing their studies and would be leaving St. Louis. What would happen to the music that had grown so popular that tickets were required for the Holy Week Triduum?
The Jesuits decided to bind all the works, dozens of them, into a book and, almost impulsively, to record the material, Schutte said. "We collected all the music we had. At the end of the year, we got a group together to record it."
They lined up a studio. "We did several takes of each song," said Dufford. "It cost us $1,500 to do the recording." Schutte's parents helped underwrite the cost, and further assistance came from Bob Doyle, SJ, then the treasurer of the Missouri Province, and Jack Zuercher, SJ, then formation director for the Wisconsin Province.
"I thought that this music should be open to the whole Church," said Zuercher, now at Creighton University and working with Christian Life Communities. "I appreciated the music very much, and I saw the value it was and could be for liturgical worship and personal prayer. I talked to the provincial and told him I was pretty sure that this would be an investment, not a gift, because there would be income coming from it."
Zuercher was right. The four-record album, Neither Silver Nor Gold, immediately attracted eager buyers.
"A year after Neither Silver Nor Gold came out, the publisher called Foley and said it was selling like hotcakes," said Dufford. Zuercher told group members if they wanted to keep going, the Society would support them.
During the summer of 1974, the group spent six weeks together in Berkeley, California, working on their next record, Earthen Vessels, released in '75. That set the pattern for the next decade. Members worked individually on songs while they fulfilled other assignments during the year, then they met for several weeks to refine the numbers and record a new album.
Over the next nine years they produced five more collections: A Dwelling Place, Gentle Night, Wood Hath Hope, Lord of Light, and The Steadfast Love. Their music became an integral part of the fabric of American Catholic worship experience and also found its way into Protestant hymnals.
"Students tell me they grew up listening to this music," said Foley. "We didn't expect to set something like this in motion."
I can still see where I was sitting in St. Cecilia's Cathedral in Omaha that Sunday in 1981. Hearing "Be Not Afraid" at Communion seemed like a message from God that I would become a mother.
My husband and I had applied to adopt a child from Mother Teresa. Kathy, her American representative in Washington, D.C., had told us we were at the top of the list. That April, while I was in Washington for work, I called Kathy to check on our status.
The Kathy who answered seemed distant. Why hadn't we responded to her letter asking a question? Since we hadn't answered, she assumed we were no longer interested.
What letter? We never got a letter, I stuttered. Distracted by a more urgent problem, Kathy couldn't remember what her question had been. She would check further but made no promises. I had to come back to Washington the following week. Perhaps we could meet then.
I panicked. I assumed the worst. The most important thing in my life was completely out of my control. Could a postal fluke cost us this adoption?
Prospective parents often feel they are on trial as they move through the long, scary adoption process-guilty until proven innocent. Playing the recording of "Be Not Afraid" had sustained me for months, especially the line "Blest are you that weep and mourn, for one day you shall laugh."
Now everything was in question. That weekend was the longest of my life-until Communion, when I heard "You shall cross the barren desert, but you shall not die of thirst." At that instant I started crying. I knew God was telling me that things would work out.
"Eileen, this is Kathy," started a phone call the next morning. "When you come to Washington, I'll have a child for you." She never explained the cause of the confusion.
| Dr. Eileen Wirth, professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Creighton University, is a former newspaper reporter and freelance author and current member of Company's board of trustees. |
On Thursday night, I left dinner at Kathy's home with a tiny photo of Raj, our Raj. When I got home, I played "Be Not Afraid" for the umpteenth time. I'm not sure I laughed but I never stopped smiling.
As I interviewed the St. Louis Jesuits for this article, I wanted to tell them about their impact on my own life, but it felt awkward. So, Roc, Bob, Dan, and John, here's my belated thanks for the lifeline you gave me when I needed it most. And I speak for thousands.
Thanks, guys. Thanks.
Eileen