A visit to the White House. (Odds & Ends).

Jesuits in the White House? Oh no!

Oh yes. Not the White House in Washington, D.C., rather the White House in St. Louis, Missouri. This White House, beautifully situated on a bluff overlooking the mighty Mississippi and the flatlands of Illinois on the other side of the river, is a retreat center run by the Society of Jesus. Little did Jesuit missionary Father Jacques Marquette know in 1673 when he and his party of explorers paddled by these 75 acres that one day his religious order would own it.

How such a sacred place received such a secular name is quite the story. After the British sacked Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812 and burned the president's mansion, some politicos worried that it could happen again. There was talk about moving the capital to a more easily defendable location.

In 1845 a group of Missourians thought the Midwest would be the perfect place for the nation's capital and pitched the proposal to that year's national Constitutional Convention. It made some sense. By the mid 1800s St. Louis was more centrally located in the expanding country than Washington, D.C., thanks in part to Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase and the annexation of Texas. Furthermore, St. Louis was located on a major "highway" of the nation, the Mississippi River. But the proposal went nowhere.

Then in 1869 a "Move the Capital" convention was held in St. Louis, attended by representatives from more than a dozen Midwestern states. Henry T. Blow, a well-connected industrialist who owned the property the Jesuits would someday purchase, offered it as the ideal spot for the president's home. In a slight variation on the "If you build it, they will come" motif, Blow established a railroad station there and named the place White House. He also had the government survey his land, another step he hoped would contribute to relocating the capital to St. Louis.

"If you name it and survey it, they will come" did not work. Henry Blow failed at his attempt. But he succeeded in giving his property its distinguished name, and that has remained the elegant moniker of this land ever since.

The Jesuits purchased the property in 1922, and since then more than 120,000 retreatants have found this White House a place of faith and spirituality. For years Missouri's White House operated as a men's retreat house, but in October 1980 retreats for women were included in its ministry.

In a bit of imaginative discernment, Bishop Joseph A. Murphy, S.J., during the 1925 dedication of a new building on the White House grounds, said, "Father Marquette surely must have looked up at these beautiful bluffs and said to himself, `Now there would be a fine place for a Jesuit retreat house.'" Well, maybe.

But one thing is for sure: There are Jesuits in this White House, a capital idea easily defended.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.