From JD Flynn's article:
“Early this year we became aware of allegations of sexual misconduct by David Haas, and we learned the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis was considering a decision not to provide him a letter of suitability,” GIA Publications said in a June 13 Facebook post.GIA publishes the Gather and Worship series of hymnals which are widely used by Catholic parishes across the United States, in addition to octavos, song collections in printed format and recordings in a variety of media. GIA has sold Haas's compositions and recordings for as long as I've been involved in liturgical music, going back to the early 1980s.
“In response, we suspended our sponsorship and publishing relationship with Mr. Haas, and have not sponsored his work since late January,” the publisher added.
Haas is one of the giants of the Catholic worship music renewal as a composer, clinician, speaker, concert performer and educator. His compositions surely are among the most-sung in the American Catholic church. The 1990s-era Gather Comprehensive hymnal includes over 100 Haas compositions, which means that Haas compositions account for over 10% of the hymnal's repertoire - an extraordinary amount for a single composer. The more recent Gather Third Edition includes over 80 Haas compositions.
The CNA article lists, as some of Haas's best-known compositions, "Best Are They", "You Are Mine" and "We Are Called". There are many others that would be familiar to frequent attendees of Catholic masses, including "Now We Remain", "We Have Been Told" and "You Are The Voice". In addition, Haas has composed some frequently-sung settings of Responsorial Psalm texts, including "The Lord Is My Light And My Salvation" (Psalm 27),"If Today You Hear God's Voice" (Psalm 95), "We Are God's People" (Psalm 100) and "I Will Praise Your Name" (Psalm 145).
It appears that a number of allegations of misconduct against Haas have been collected by a victims-advocate organization called Into Account, an outfit of which I haven't previously heard. The CNA article provides a link to a letter composed by Into Account which is addressed to "Associates of David Haas", presumably including GIA, and perhaps other publishing houses. In the letter, Into Account explains its mission, and why it has sent the letter to the recipients:
We specialize in providing support to survivors in cases that involve churches, faith-based organizations, and perpetrators who abuse spiritual authority. In that capacity, we’ve received reports from multiple individuals reporting sexually predatory actions from the composer David Haas. These individuals have asked Into Account to communicate our assessment of the information they’ve shared with us, which is the purpose of this letter.Into Account declined to include individual claims in its letter, but does summarize some of the allegations:
The shared goal of the individuals who have confided in us is to remove Haas’s access to the many forums in which he encounters potential victims. You are receiving this letter because they have identified you or your organization as a platform for Haas.
Some women have described romantic relationships with Haas that felt consensual in the beginning, but were then marked by sudden, overwhelming sexual aggression from Haas, in which any resistance was met with extreme anger. Other women have described incidents that we would interpret as outright sexual battery, involving groping, forcible kissing, and aggressive, lewd propositions.I don't work full-time as a church musician, but I led ensembles for a couple of decades prior to my ordination to the diaconate, and I still help out (or did, prior to COVID-19) when needed at our parish. My time as an ensemble leader spanned most of the 1980s and all of the 1990s, when David Haas's music was new, cool music. In a very modest way, I was among those who evangelized Haas's compositions, as well as those of Marty Haugen, Rev. Jan Michael Joncas, Bernadette Farrell and others of that generation of composers.
I have seen Haas perform a number of times, including at two concerts hosted by our parish, as well as at conventions and other events. I have shaken his hand a few times over the years, and also spent some quality time with him one Saturday a year or two ago when our music director brought Haas in to lead our parish leadership in a retreat. I can say from personal observation that Haas can charm.
When he was younger Haas was rather handsome, and he had a tenor voice that would cause hearts to melt. I've spent enough time with church music professionals to believe that some of them would be susceptible to his charms. Most parish church musicians strike me as mature and well-grounded, but some of them clearly aren't.
There is a sort of "star system" in Catholic church music, which has been promoted by the publishers, notably GIA, over the years. In the rather specialized and somewhat strange world of Catholic musicians, David Haas has been a superstar, an A-Lister. I've witnessed parish musicians gushing to him about how his songs have changed their lives, transformed their spirituality and, in one or two cases, have been the catalyst for mystical spiritual experiences. It's not difficult to see that a predator could find potential prey among such fans.
It seems that Haas's home diocese, the St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocese, also is aware of allegations of improprieties. The CNA article states that the archdiocese received an allegation about Haas in 1987, and then two more in 2018. After the 2018 accusations, the archdiocese refused to provide Haas with a letter of recommendation he had requested, and also informed Haas that if anyone in the archdiocese wished to engage him for an event, Haas had to inform them about the allegations. If the archdiocese did anything else to make the allegations known, it didn't say so. It's worth noting, though, that Haas's reputation was nationwide in scope (probably international), and presumably he was highly in demand for events far outside his home diocese. Whether the archdiocese had a moral (or even church legal) responsibility to make the allegations more publicly known is a question which may deserve some consideration.
I am a little nervous about a suspension (what does that mean? the books are out there; will they be recalled?) based on a letter the archdiocese is "considering." If I were editing the story, I'd demand a little more sourcing.
ReplyDeleteHowever, based on what seems likely, we have the old Richard Wagner problem, don't we? Wagner was an undoubted jerk (to put it mildly). But then there is his music. Do we deny ourselves the music because the composer was a 24 karat jerk? Wagner was not the only artist of his kind, just the most famous of his era for being a jerk. I'll keep using "You Are Mine" as a prelude to meditation, just as I keep going back to Siegfried Idyll. Not listening couldn't hurt Wagner or Haas; it would only be a loss the rest of us.
I asked my wife, who also is a church musician, how she would feel about dropping Haas's compositions from the parish's repertoire. She wants to mull it over.
DeleteTom, FWIW, I tend to land where you do, that an artist's works should be judged apart from the sinner who created them. That is not the prevailing Zeitgeist though, especially on social media.
Tom, I'll add the Strausses, father and son. Not nearly as lovable as their music. I'll still spin to their waltzes if dancing is ever allowed again. The artist is a conduit. The music is the music.
DeleteSpeaking of Wagner, is the wedding march from Lohengrin still controversial to use in church? We got by with it when we got married. My husband requested it. The priest wasn't very musically inclined and didn't flag it. Easier to get forgiveness than permission.
DeleteThe music field in general has great opportunities for abuse.
ReplyDelete1. A lot of sound proof rooms for mentors and their students. 2. The nature of a lot of musical mentoring requires close physical proximity and even contact. 3. There is a strong tradition of emotional bonds between mentors and their students.
I read an article on this in the Chronicle of Higher Education probably about two decades ago. At that time there was a great deal of reluctance for students to publicly object to much prevalent abuse. A lot of them seemed to think there was nothing that could be done about it without risking a career.
The Church situation makes things even more complicated. Many in the Church deny that they have "spiritual influence or authority" over others. This is true of even ordained ministers. They claim everything is consensual and deny power differences.
That is sad! We don't use GIA, but the OCP music editions we use feature Haas' songs. I imagine they'll get dropped like a hot potato too. Even though he is sort of loosely grouped with the genre associated with the St. Louis Jesuits, I don't believe he was ever a priest, so at least there's that.
ReplyDelete"I don't believe he was ever a priest"
DeleteYou're right; he's a layperson. That has a bearing on the questions I attempted to raise in the post, regarding the St. Paul and Minneapolis Archdiocese's responsibility for him.
Haas is not a cleric, and it's far from clear whether he is an employee of an organization for which the archdiocese is responsible. My impression is that Haas earns his income from royalties paid for sales and performances of his compositions, and from conducting clinics, performing in concerts and similar pursuits. The best descriptor of his employment status may be "self-employed".
He has been affiliated with GIA for many years (GIA has been the primary publisher of his material), so presumably Haas is (or was) under contract with GIA somehow. "Under contract" may not exactly translate to "employed by". And legally, GIA is not part of the institutional church; it is an independent vendor for whom church entities are its primary customers. There is some sort of canon law(-ish) requirement that Catholic music be theologically approved by the diocese in which the publisher resides; for GIA, that is the Chicago Archdiocese. But this isn't a question of potential doctrinal issues with lyrics; it's a question of accusations of immoral behavior by a clinician and presenter who also happens to be a composer. I am not sure what the responsibility is for a diocese in this regard.
(It's even more complicated than I'm painting it, because I think it's likely that, over the years, Haas probably has been employed in roles for which his archdiocese has direct employer responsibility - e.g. as a parish music director - or for which the archdiocese would have had some influence - e.g. if Haas ever taught at one of the Catholic colleges within the archdiocese. For some years Haas ran a sort of teen music ministry summer school called Music Ministry Alive!; I don't know whether it had any diocesan affiliation.)
On the whole, these accusations seem to be criminal law or tort matters; Haas is accused of behavior that may amount to sexual assault.
Coincidentally this article appeared on NCR this morning, regarding the financial problems faced by church music publishers during the pandemic. This isn't going to help their situation.
ReplyDeleteKatherine, thanks for the link to that NCR article. That optimistic view expressed by Wade Wisler of OCP, that "we are a resurrection people", is typical of most who work in that industry. They're not only merchants, but also ministers.
DeleteThe article is a good snapshot of the financial repercussions being felt across the church.
Even before the coronavirus hit, it seemed to me that there were signs that Catholic music is ailing (or worse). The National Association of Pastoral Musicians convention I attended last summer had something like 1,000 attendees. By contrast, a convention I had attended 15 or so years earlier, in Milwaukee, had over 5,000 attendees. That's more than a decline; it's more like free-fall. What factors account for it? I'm not plugged in enough to know for certain, but I speculate it's a combination of many fewer posts for professional musicians as parishes close and combine, and budget crunches causing parishes to slash professional-development funds for their employees (or seeking less expensive methods than a national convention).
Those publishers featured in the NCR article are the big sponsors of the NPM convention. If their income is plummeting, then presumably their promotion budgets will be cut. The whole industry (for want of a better term) seems broken.
It's probably a plus that the disruption has forced churches to invest money in audio-visual transmission equipment that they should have had years ago. But budgets are finite -- and the recovery from the current hit likely will not be quick and bountiful -- so music is going to suffer for a long while.
DeleteOn that subject, one of the places where we have been getting our Mass feed is St. Patrick's in New York, which bills itself as "the nation's parish." I can't help but feel Archbishop Michael Corrigan (who served from 1885 to 1902) got a terrific deal on hymnals and bought so many that they are still in use. (This week we are attending a Sacred Heart novena at our daughter's monastery.)
As far as "audio visual transmission equipment" goes, there appears to be a huge range of what is being used. Our parish uses a set-up consisting of an i-pad or similar tablet held by a rack attached to a front pew. There is a video screen in the social hall for use if there is enough people for overflow from the church (there hasn't been). The "video team" are the principal and teachers from the parish grade school. They have had plenty of practice, with virtual school!
DeleteOne of the other parishes has sponsorship through a news channel, and their Masses are filmed by a professional camera crew. Which is nice, but our small cheap system works too.
I'm aware of one other intersection of church music and abuse. The late Fr. Ernest Sands, a British priest, was removed from ministry amid accusations of sexually abusing minors. He was the composer of a song, "Sing of the Lord's Goodness", which was popular 20 or so years ago. It's a terrific piece, written in 5/4 time with the same rhythm (and similar chord changes) as the Dave Brubeck jazz classic Take Five.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-36082236
That one's still in use. It's in the current OCP music edition. I agree, it's good. We have used it in my group, though not very recently.
DeleteIt's going to be tiresome if we have to redact everything out of our repertoire which was composed by someone not qualifying for Servant of God.
Back in the '70s we used "Let It Be" for a Marian hymn in my hometown parish.