Plain Chant and Paul Simon: A Short History of Paulist Music
by Nicholas M. McCreary
September 20, 2011

Music holds a central place in the church’s praise and reverence for God. It is therefore not a surprise to discover that for more then a century the Paulists have had a distinguished musical tradition. The history of Paulist music falls into three periods that coincide roughly with the history of the society. Alfred Young dominated the first period, 1865-1900, characterized by Paulist efforts to accommodate American culture into Catholic worship. Young attempted to create a tradition of congregational singing at St. Paul the Apostle, using the common tunes of his day. The second period corresponds with the “Romanization” of the Paulist community that followed the Americanism controversy in 1899 and continued until Vatican II. The Paulist Choristers founded by William Finn in both Chicago and New York represent this era. The voices of the Choristers filled churches around the world with the “deep spirituality” of Gregorian chant and medieval polyphony. The last period began and ended after the Second Vatican Council. The “Roamin Collars,” a group of seminarians, roamed across college campuses bringing the Gospel message of love and hope to young people. These folk singers sought integrate Christian themes with contemporary American styles of music. In a sense, it was a return to the original work of Alfred Young, to use the music of the time to get Catholics singing.

Paulist liturgical music actually begins with Clarence Walworth, one of the original members of the community, who composed a version of “Holy God We Praise Thy Name” in the 1860s. It was Alfred Young, however, who served as “the founder and developer of the whole Paulist musical tradition.” A traditionalist, Young advocated the use of Gregorian chant. At the same time, he developed several vernacular hymnals to encourage congregational singing, and much of the music was of his own composition.

Born in Bristol, England, in 1831, Young migrated with his family to the United States while still a child. He graduated from Princeton in 1847, and from the Medical Department of the University of New York in 1852. During his medical studies, he left the Episcopal Church and became a Catholic. He lived for a while with his brother in Georgia practicing medicine, but by 1854, he had been sent to the seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris to study for the priesthood under the sponsorship of James Roosevelt Bayley, the Bishop of Newark. Young was ordained a priest in 1856.

Father D. Brude Nieli, C.S.P., sings and plays the guitar during the Paulist 150th Anniversary Holy Spirit Retreat held at Mount Paul in Oak Ridge, N.J., in June 2007. Father Nieli was a member of the "Roamin' Collars," a group of seminarians that roamed across college campuses bringing the Gospel message of love and hope to young people. These folk singers sought integrate Christian themes with contemporary American styles of music.
Father D. Brude Nieli, C.S.P., sings and plays the guitar during the Paulist 150th Anniversary Holy Spirit Retreat held at Mount Paul in Oak Ridge, N.J., in June 2007. Father Nieli was a member of the “Roamin’ Collars,” a group of seminarians that roamed across college campuses bringing the Gospel message of love and hope to young people. These folk singers sought integrate Christian themes with contemporary American styles of music.

While serving as pastor of St. Paul’s Church in Princeton, he invited the Paulists to preach a mission at his parish in January 1859. The missionaries included Isaac Hecker, who was accompanied by Francis Baker, who like young was a Princeton alumnus. Two years later, Young became the second priest (after Robert Tillotson) to enter the community. He began his career as a missionary with a series of missions in lower Manhattan in early 1862. As the newest member of the team, Young was relegated to preaching the morning instruction and hearing confessions. He developed, however, over the next three years into an accomplished missionary. In late 1865, Hecker suspended the preaching of missions due to the deaths of Francis Baker and Robert Tillotson, and the second departure of Clarence Walworth. During this period, the Paulists turned their attention toward their fledgling parish in New York. Young was appointed “prefect,” or priest-in-charge of the parish, succeeding the late Francis Baker. Young briefly returned to the missions when they resumed in 1871, but after 1873 he turned all of his energies to the parish of St. Paul the Apostle.

Young inherited from Baker a mixed choir of men and women who sang from a gallery in the rear of the church. It was a popular custom of the time for many churches – both Catholic and Protestant – to have large choirs with several soloists (especially sopranos) who performed works of sacred music composed by Mozart, Haydn and other “modern” musicians. Young disapproved because it kept congregations from singing. He preferred the church’s tradition of an all-male choir with boy sopranos and the use of Gregorian chant for Mass and vespers, which he believed encouraged congregational singing.

Between 1865 and 1871 Father Young trained boy trebles (sopranos) for the choir. He also moved the choir and the organ from the back loft to the sanctuary in the very front of the church. Young gradually began to introduce plain chant into the repertory of the parish. In 1871, when Hecker asked Young to return to the newly formed mission band, he entrusted his choir to Edmund G. Hurley, who would serve as organist and choir director until his death in 1918. Leaving the missions in 1873, Young returned to St. Paul the Apostle and resumed his duties as prefect.

Alfred Young was a prolific writer, publishing numerous articles, essays and poems in The Catholic World and other reviews. In several of his works, he expressed his views on the use of plain chant and the necessity of congregational singing. Young complained that musical standards in Catholic churches had fallen. He criticized the performance of “modern” musical selections, as members of the congregation could not participate. Music, he argued, should assist people in their praise of God. Modern choral performance was operatic and not liturgical. As beautiful as it may be, it kept worshippers from singing God’s praises “as ‘t(was) their nature to.”

The congregation was to have an equal role together with the choir, who was to instruct and lead the congregation at Mass and vespers. The traditional music of the church liturgy was Gregorian chant, which, according to Young, was “better fitted for the divine offices of the church, and vastly surpassing … for its use in every particular” than polyphony.

“The best music for congregational singing,” was plain chant, or music like medieval polyphony which was based on the eight Gregorian tones. Young opposed the use of “modern” music in church worship, for composers like Mozart and Haydn had adapted secularized operatic styles of music to various parts of the Mass and vespers. It was also impossible for the congregation to sing. As this modern music was performed, often in concert with soloists, it could not be considered as prayer, but served as in impediment to the true worship of God in song.

For Young, the fastest and simplest way to return to congregational singing and to end the abuses of choral performance was to return to chant. This would have to happen gradually as the prevalence of modern music in churches made people unaccustomed to singing. His first concern was to end “the concert style of music … no matter what music is at first employed.” He advocated the use of vernacular hymns “at special devotional services, set to modern music, accompanied by the organ – all in discord though its tones are – (to be) the most practical means to give congregational singing a start and thus establish a right custom by ousting a false one.” While he preferred chant, vernacular music provided an interim means toward restoring the congregation’s voice in the liturgy. The use of such music, even if it were of inferior quality, was preferable to operatic pieces regardless of their beauty.

Alfred Young compiled several hymnals in the vernacular to supply what he considered to be a dearth of adequate music for congregational singing at “special Lenten services, during retreats and missions, at low Masses and at meetings of sodalities established in parishes and in our colleges and convent schools.” He composed much of the music and many of the lyrics for his hymnal. The hymns were very similar to the Victorian parlor songs that were poplar during the latter half of the nineteenth century, a genre in which Steven Foster wrote. Young frequently included hymns taken from popular Catholic poetry of the period, such as that of Edward Caswall and Francis Faber. He also included several of his own compositions. He vast majority of the music found in the hymnals was intended for use outside of Mass and vespers.

After a protracted illness, Alfred Young died on April 4, 1900. In many ways, he foresaw the revival of chant and polyphony that followed his death. Among the first acts of Pope St. Pius X, after assuming office in 1903, was the proclamation of a “motu proprio” concerning the restoration of sacred music. The pope declared that the “principal office” of sacred music functioned “to clothe (liturgical) texts with suitable melody,” and “to add greater efficacy to the text” so that the faithful may more readily and easily receive the graces proper to the celebration of the holy mysteries.” Sacred music had to possess “in the highest degree” the qualities of “sanctity and goodness of form, from which its other characteristic of universality spontaneously (sprang).” The “manner in which it is presented” had to be holy as well, and it had to be “true art.” Gregorian chant, which Pius X deemed “proper to the Roman Church,” had these qualities “in the highest degree” and classic polyphony was also acceptable.

The new pope surprisingly allowed for the use of modern music provided that they were “compositions of such excellence, sobriety and gravity, the they are in no way unworthy of the liturgical functions.” This had the effect of excluding women and elevating choirs with boys’ voices. The pope had transformed Young’s personal preferences into the church’s standard norm.

Eleven days after Young’s death, a 19-year-old Bostonian named William Finn entered the Paulist novitiate. A self-proclaimed “Republican bee in a Democratic hive,” Finn received private piano and organ lessons together with his brothers and sisters, an experience he disliked. His conversion to music came at the age of 14, when his mother took him to a Tenebrae service at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. Finn heard the lamentations sung in harmony by a boys’ choir. Shortly thereafter he developed an interest in choral music, and served as organist at the Redemptorist mission church in Roxbury.

After attending Boston Latin School and St. Charles College in Ellicott City, Md., Finn entered the Paulists on April 5, 1900. He was sent to St. Thomas College in Washington, D.C., to begin his studies for the priesthood. In 1903, the Paulists came to downtown Chicago to staff Old St. Mary’s Church. Finn’s studies were interrupted in 1904, and the 24-year-old seminarian was sent to Chicago to begin a sanctuary choir, “to organize and train the greatest boys’ and men’s choir in the Middle West.”

After his ordination in 1906, Father Finn returned to Old St. Mary’s to work with the choristers. In 1912, he took the choir to Paris, where he won first prize in a competition against 96 choirs form all over Europe. Finn was awarded “The Palms of the French Academy,” an award sponsored by the French government, which made special mention of the quality of the boy sopranos. The trip culminated in a performance before Pope St. Pius X at the Vatican. The pope exclaimed that Finn’s choir sounded better than his own. Commenting later, Finn bragged, “He wasn’t saying anything … the Sistine Choir was no good.” In appreciation, the pope conferred the title Magister Cantorum on Finn after the performance. In 1914, he received a doctorate in music from the University of Notre Dame.

Finn agreed with the pope’s teaching on sacred music, believing that boy choirs were “the proper and aesthetically correct vehicle” to express the “deep spirituality” of polyphony and plain chant. Women’s voices to Finn, were appropriate for modern operatic music, but both chant and polyphony required the “impersonal qualities and mysterious intimations” of boys voices. Where Young made allowances for the use of modern music to encourage congregational singing, Finn advocated the training and performance of boy choirs, and the exclusive use of Gregorian chant or polyphony in the liturgy. Finn was convinced that his own success would be duplicated by any “competent choirmaster,” he wrote.

“The beautiful voices heard in some of our greater are the product assiduous training, and in the majority of cases were but of average quality when accepted. Choir-boys are made, not born … the rough-and-ready boy, the nervous, noisy rascal whose chief talent seems to be in creating mischief, the always-in-the-way lad whose only apparent excuse for living is the fact that God created him, and that someday in the remote future he may become a useful man, these are the types of boys that even the most successful choirmaster has to educate into the choristers whom so many think are young cherubs loaned by a special arrangement with Heaven to chosen choirs.”

Finn dreamed that a “great central school of music-pedagogy organized and under the supervision of the hierarchy” should serve to fill the need for choirmasters. With an eye to founding such a school and serving as its director, Finn developed a curriculum. He also had in mind establishing his own choir school to train boys to sing.

In 1918, while the Choristers were on a six month concert tour raising money to assist refugees from the First World War, John Hughes, the Superior General of the Paulists, transferred Finn to St. Paul the Apostle in New York. Edmund Hurley, the long-time director of the church’s choir, had died, and Finn was given the task of replicating his Chicago success at the mother church in New York. Upon the conclusion of the tour, Finn arrived in New York City with several members of his Chicago choir (including a 17-year-old future Paulist, Eugene O’Malley) to provide a basis for his new choir. Leroy Wetzel, a layman from the parish, assumed leadership of the Chicago choristers.

Finn saw his move to New York as a possible opportunity to establish his choir school. Through the generosity of Charles M. Schwab, Finn housed his choristers in a gothic building on lower Riverside Drive, and later moved to Libby Castle in Washington Heights. Unfortunately, after the first year, Schwab withdrew his support, leaving Finn “only with his wits … upon which to fall back.” The school continued until 1924, when chronic debt led to its closure.

As the reputation of Father Finn and the New York Choristers spread, he wad able to recruit boys from all parts of the city, eager to sing on Finn’s choir tours across the country. With the founding of the Paulist radio station WLWL in 1925, the Choristers reached new listeners. Their audience continued to expand when NBC began broadcasting “The Catholic Hour,” a highly popular Catholic radio show which featured Finn and the Paulist Choristers.

Finn began to lose his hearing in the late thirties. This lead to his retirement as director of the choristers in 1940. He wrote several books explicating his theory and practice of choral training, including, “The Epitome of Choral Technique” (1937), “The Art of the Choral Conductor” (1939), and “The Conductor Raises His Baton” (1944). In 1947, he published his autobiography, “Sharps and Flats in Five Decades,” the “ground bass” (or underlying theme) of which was that “music is the most powerful spiritual instrumentality by which human beings can be moved.” Finn died at the Age of 79 in 1961.

If Alfred Young was the founder of the Paulist music tradition, William Finn presided over its golden age. In addition to being an astute master of the classics of medieval polyphony, he composed many works in a similar style. He was particularly fond of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Guido d’Arezzo. Whereas Young eschewed music for performance, Finn was not afraid to have his boys perform pieces by Brahms or Bach. His concert programs frequently consisted of Gregorian chant, Latin and English polyphonies, modern motets and anthems, and “concerted pieces,” which included solos and duets. Finn believed the human voice in chorus to be the most natural and ultimate instrument to serve as “interagent between absolute music and the emotions which … relate it variously to memory and imagination.” To his public, that instrument in Finn’s hand was among the finest in the country, if not the world.

When William Finn left Chicago for New York City in 1918, he left his choir under the direction of Leroy Wetzel. Ten years later the Chicago Choristers of Old St. Mary’s Church were once again under the direction of a Paulist.

Eugene Francis O’Malley was born in Chicago on Dec. 6, 1901. At the age of 12, he became a boy soprano in Finn’s choir. In 1918, the 17-year-old O’Malley accompanied Finn to New York to assist in the founding of the Choristers where from 1918-1920 he served as Finn’s assistant director as well as music director at another parish in lower Manhattan. O’Malley returned to Chicago in 1920 to begin studies in music at DePaul University, where he received a doctorate. In 1925, he entered the Paulists and was sent to Rome to study at the Angelicum. He was ordained in 1927 and received a doctorate in Sacred Theology in 1928.

Upon the completion of his studies, O’Malley returned to the United States and was assigned to Old St. Mary’s Church in his native Chicago. He succeeded Leroy Wetzel as director of the Paulist Choristers, a position he would hold until his retirement in 1967. O’Malley carried on the tradition of concert tours and fund raising which Finn began. He continued the tradition of having the choristers sing at high Mass every Sunday at Old St. Mary’s.

As William Finn faded from the scene after 1940, the reputation of the Chicago Choristers and Eugene O’Malley grew throughout the 1940s and 1950s. During the Second World War, the Paulist Choristers of Chicago performed concerts which raised more than $9,000 in war bonds. In appreciation of their efforts, they received special citations from the United States House of Representatives, the Illinois State Legislature and the mayor and city council of Chicago. In 1944 and 1945 respectively, Paramount Pictures released “Going My Way” and “The Bells of St. Mary’s” (which won an Oscar for best picture) starring Bing Crosby. The actor and singer portrayed a priest who founds a boy choir in an old downtown parish. Curiously the parish was St. Mary’s and the priest was named Father O’Malley. The choir received a letter of thanks from President Dwight Eisenhower, having performed at the Republican National Convention in 1952, and they sang for President John F. Kennedy during his last trip to Chicago in March 1963. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson received the Choristers at the White House.

By 1964, the directives of the Second Vatican Council went into effect. Among the mandates were the restoration of the vernacular to the liturgy, as well as a reiterated emphasis on the importance of congregational singing. O’Malley balked at this and announced his retirement in January 1965. “The liturgical reform movement, with congregational singing and English instead of Latin, seems to have made us unnecessary,” said O’Malley in an interview with the Chicago press. Public outcry and discussion with James Cunningham, the superior of Old St. Mary’s, however, convinced O’Malley to continue as director despite what he felt was “a lack of suitable English music for high Mass.” The choirmaster was reluctant to develop music for the congregation to sing in English and retired in 1967 after 39 years with the Paulist Choristers of Chicago. The choir disbanded shortly thereafter, unable to find a successor to the larger-than-life O’Malley. Father Eugene O’Malley died in August 1989 at Old St. Mary’s Church.

After Father Finn’s retirement in 1940, two laymen – Edward Slattery and Herbert Becker – succeeded him and kept the choir together until another Paulist could be found to assume leadership.

Joseph Robert Foley, a native of Minneapolis, was born in 1915 and grew up in the Paulist parish of St. Lawrence. In 1928, he enrolled in the Paulist juniorate at St. Peter’s College in Catonsville, Md. While in theological studies, he received instruction in organ and choral techniques at Catholic University of America. He later studied with famed organist Conrad Bernier.

Shortly before Foley’s ordination in May 1941 at St. Paul, Minn., Henry Ignatius Stark, the Superior General of the Paulists, made arrangements to send him to Old St. Mary’s in Chicago “to make further study in organ and choral direction” under Eugene O’Malley in order to prepare him to “eventually take some responsible position in the musical organizations of the community.” The imperious O’Malley was unimpressed with Foley’s musical acumen. Conceding that Foley had “native ability and a find mind,” and that he had done well with the “limited musical horizon at his command,” O’Malley found Foley to lack the special “knowledge of choral technique, the voice culture” necessary to be “a successful choirmaster and choral conductor.” Foley left Chicago and spent the next year in Los Angeles at St. Paul the Apostle. He then went on to Salt Lake City and Layton, Utah. In 1943, Stark decided that Foley was ready to assume the directorship of the Paulist Choristers in New York. Here he carried on the tradition of presenting the highest quality of liturgical music both at Sunday Mass at St. Paul’s and in concerts. Palestrina’s polyphonic motet, “Super Flumina Babylonis” (By the Waters of Babylon), particularly pleased him. Unlike the globe-trotting O’Malley, Foley kept the New York Choristers in Manhattan, making occasional appearances at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In an effort to maintain the high standards which had come to be expected of the Paulist Choristers, Foley apprenticed himself to the group’s founder, William Finn, for private study in vocal techniques. Unlike O’Malley, Finn was enthusiastic about Foley’s abilities, noting that his boy sopranos sang with a hauntingly lovely tone.” Foley also studied organ under the renowned teacher Ralph Harris.

In 1955, Foley began a summer camp for his boys in the Adirondack Mountains. It was not only an opportunity to keep the choristers’ voices well tuned throughout the year, but for many boys, it was their only chance to escape New York City and experience the great outdoors during the summer months. Father Foley had a deep concern for the well-being of his Choristers, the majority of whom were recruited from socially and economically disadvantaged areas across the city. He never expelled a boy for incompetence or unruly behavior, encouraging them toward self-improvement instead. One former Chorister noted that had it not been for the Paulist Choristers, “he probably would have been serving a term in jail.” Another observed that he had “not only saved a number of young men who otherwise might have been lost, but he introduced a great many to the joys of good music.” What Joseph Foley brought to the Choristers was a ministry to the economically and socially disadvantaged. Where his predecessors, Finn and O’Malley, had emphasized the quality of a boy’s voice, Foley demonstrated a particular concern for the quality of a boy’s character and well-being.

In addition to directing the Choristers, Foley also directed the schola of the Liturgical Arts Society and lectured in Gregorian Chant at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and at eth Union Theological Seminary in New York. He was also a long standing member of the American Guild of Organists, serving as a member of its executive board.

When the new directives form the Second Vatican Council went into effect, Joseph Foley was among the first choirmasters to invite women into his choir. With his assistant director, Frank Campbell-Watson, he composed “The People’s Mass” in 1966, a hymnal of songs in English for the congregation to sing with the choir during high Mass. More than 750,000 copies were sold in less than a year. Joseph Foley retired after 30 years as director of the Paulist Choristers in 1973 and died of an embulism at the mother house some few months later. At the time of his death on Jan. 5, 1974, he had completed a choral arrangement of the Psalms for the liturgy. He also served as an editor for a new hymnal commissioned by the Diocese of Paterson, N.J.

Although the Paulist Choristers of New York continued until the early 1980s, the age of Paulist polyohony passed with the death of Father Foley. What set Joseph Foley apart from his predecessors was his successful ability to bridge the gap between two worlds of church music before and after Vatican II. Foley found a way to adapt the Catholic Church’s ancient and rich musical tradition to contemporary American culture in the best sense of Alfred Young.

The last phase of Paulist musical tradition began in 1964 when Patrick Hughes, Jim Donovan, William Kirby, Dave Liddell and Tim Tighe – all seminarians at St. Paul’s College in Washington, D.C. – formed the Paulist Folk Singers. The seminarian singers saw themselves as a vehicle to bring the message of “vocation in the broader sense of service” to the young people of America. With a repertoire that included selections by the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, Simon and Garfunkle, and Bob Dylan, they toured college campuses and coffee houses. In the light of Vatican II, their concerts provided an opportunity to dispel many of the stereotypes people held with regard to seminarians. It was a chance to reveal seminarians as “normal human beings who poke fun, laugh and sing popular songs.”

The Paulist Folk Singers did not consider it their mission to sing explicitly religious songs. One reason was the lack of “religious music as we know it today” available at the time. In the mid-1960s, contemporary religious music was in its infancy and folk music was at its height. The enthusiasm and optimism of the era influenced these young Paulists. “There was a freshness about the church (and we) felt the energy form John F. Kennedy, the Civil Rights movement and the New Frontier. It was an exciting time to be 20 years old, and the music reflected that,” said Father Jim Donovan, C.S.P., in 1994.

The call of all young people to service was the theme that the Paulist Folk Singers emphasized at the conclusion of their concerts. Some of their concert material was published in an issue of the “Paulist Fathers News” edited by Father Norman O’Connor, in which he addressed the concerns, fears and aspirations of a new generation of Americans. O’Connor wrote, “Anyone over 30 will not understand these words, for they come out of our shadows and our wishes. … they exist and we can state them only because the moods and emotions that generate them are so strong and their streams run deep and far. Weaving together the music of Bob Dylan, Sonny and Cher, Pete Seeger and the speeches of John F. Kennedy, O’Connor ended with these words: “If I were to wrap up all the sentiment in one word it would be service.” The Paulist Folk Singers emphasized the value of serving others, capturing the idealism of a new young generation and connecting it to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. They expressed the hope that their young audience “will go out and turn the two commandments into one new – first and only shall be that a man must so serve his neighbor with his whole heart and whole soul and whole strength that he will love God.” The concert ended with an invitation to consider a vocation to religious life, especially the priesthood.

The Paulist Folk Singers and several similar groups from many of the religious houses affiliated with the Catholic University of America held a folk festival on the university’s lawn between the library and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in the spring of 1965. That same year they toured several colleges and universities throughout New England. The group’s leader, Pat Hughes, commented, “Making people happy is often overlooked as a part of every Christian’s responsibility … our program gives people a look at a different side of seminary life and the men who live it. Many times an audience is surprised to discover seminarians to be normal human beings who poke fun, laugh and sing popular folk songs.” In 1967, the Folk Singers – Pat Hughes, Bill Kirby, Tim Tighe and Dave Liddell – were joined by 11 other Paulist seminarians when they appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York City. They joined the Medical Mission Sisters led by Sister Miriam Therese Winter in performing her composition, “Mass of a Pilgrim People.”

Father D. Brude Nieli, C.S.P., sings and plays the guitar during the Paulist 150th Anniversary Holy Spirit Retreat held at Mount Paul in Oak Ridge, N.J., in June 2007. Father Nieli was a member of the “Roamin’ Collars,” a group of seminarians that roamed across college campuses bringing the Gospel message of love and hope to young people. These folk singers sought integrate Christian themes with contemporary American styles of music.

By 1968, the group had changed, adding the voices of Joe Castellano, Paul Mullen and Bruce Nieli to Pat Hughes and Dave Liddell. A new group needed a new name, and a contest was held at St. Paul’s College. Among the suggestions were “The Electric Scapulars,” “ The Papas and the Papas,” and “The Unwed Fathers.” The group was named “The Roamin’ Collars.”

The Collars focused their message on college campuses, especially where Paulists ministered. Their travels took them across America, performing on college campuses, nearby coffee houses or Newman Centers. In 1969, the group played an outdoor concert in the plaza in front of Sproul Hall at the University of California at Berkeley, where the Free Speech movement had begun some three years earlier. In fact, recalled Bruce Nieli, the concert ended abruptly as the protest marchers came “stampeding right at us.”

In 1969, Nieli became the leader of the group following Pat Hugh’s ordination. Nieli was joined on guitar by Ken Meltz and Michael McGarry. Bob Andrade and Jocko Agati also sang vocals. Their music had changed, for their concerts were now “greatly enriched by the musical compositions of Ken Meltz. Meltz added folk hymns and contemporary religious music to the Collars’ repertoire, and in addition to concerts, the group gave liturgical music workshops that highlighted the music of Ken Meltz.

This new concert and workshop schedule increased their travel across the coast of Callifornia – Berkeley, San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Irvine – as well as university campuses in Massachusetts, Connecticut, South Carolina, West Virginia and Georgia. The Roamin’ Collars also gave concerts at St. Paul the Apostle, New York; St. Paul, Los Angeles; and St. Paul’s College, to which students and faculty invited friends and colleagues from apostolates.

“It really enhanced the spirit of the house,” Nieli remarked.

In 1971, The Roamin’ Collars recorded an album, “Until He Comes,” which came out about the same time Simon and Garfunkle released “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Dave Liddell joined them on drums and sang vocals. Carol Kavey, Dave Francoeur and John Duffy also sang vocals, and Bill Taylor played bass. Father John Geaney helped with the record’s production.

The release of “Until He Comes” marked the end of the Collars. Nieli, McGarry, Meltz and Francoeur all were all reassigned, a part of the normal course of religious formation. This brought an end to the second generation of the group. In the fall of 1971, Bruce Nieli, John Duffy and several other members of the Collars reunited and played one final concert at the University West Virginia. The Paulist Folk Singers and their successors, The Roman’ Collars, were short lived, but their influence extended far beyond their numbers. They were among the first groups to integrate contemporary American music and Catholic theology, and to introduce the guitar into the liturgy. They helped break ground and laid a foundation for more popular religious singers who followed them, such as the St. Louis Jesuits, the Montfort Singers and the Monks of the Weston Priory. Ken Meltz’s compositions paralleled those of Alfred Young, for both were attempts to get Catholics to sing with tunes were a part of their ordinary lives. This merger of liturgy and culture, from Young’s first choir to The Roamin’ Collars, brought Paulist efforts in music and liturgy full circle in a period of 100 years. In the years between, the rich sound of the Paulist Choristers, directed by Finn, O’Malley and Foley, are a testament to the richness of church music and its power to move the souls of simple listeners as well as popes and presidents.