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Restoring Padre Martinez
The Cathedral in Santa Fe, New Mexico, interrupts the low skyline with its French Gothic tower, clashing with the Spanish Mission-style celebrated in this precious city's architecture. The "foreignness" of the Cathedral is metaphor for the reign of Jean-Baptiste Lamy (1814-1888), the first Bishop of Santa Fe. His governance style clashed with the almost oldest Catholicism of the continental United States and resulted in the excommunication of Padre Antonio José Martínez (1793-1867), the curate of Taos. This is not a church history lesson where one cleric is a villain and the other is a saint. Rather, it is an all too familiar clash of cultures, complicated by competing egos.
It would make a great movie. The opening scene frames Antonio José Martínez, a young widower caressing his 12-year-old daughter María de Luz, lying on her deathbed in 1824. He had chosen the priesthood after his wife died in childbirth. Ordained in 1823 for the Durango, Mexico, diocese, he quickly emerges as leader in the New Mexico province. Because of his intelligence, ambition and social skills, he eventually is named to an ecclesiastical post of Vicar for the region, permitted to perform confirmations - a sacrament usually reserved only to a bishop. Man of many talents, he buys a printing press, publishes a newspaper, writes text books on mathematics and history, opens a coeducational school and defends local Indian tribes in a 1843 report to Mexican President Antonio de Santa Anna. I can see a closing scene with this now middle-aged Padre Martínez surrounded by fellow priests, announcing the outbreak of war between Mexico and the United States.
Next we see blue uniformed U.S. soldiers rushing down the streets of Taos, near the home of Kit Carson, former army scout gone entrepreneurial scoundrel. The new governor, Charles Bent, has been killed and scalped. Fear is on the faces of the English-speaking minority. They are afraid of the Indians who have been abused and of the Spanish-speaking they have scorned. The curate of Taos, Antonio José Martínez, is believed to be the instigator of an 1846 guerrilla while the Mexican War was still being waged. After all, he has published editorials against the seizure of businesses and ranches by fortune seekers from the East. It is January 1847. The American authorities have to deal with the priest who is virtual head of Catholicism in New Mexico, and soon becomes the political leader as well. When a provisional assembly is created after the peace to organize the territory, Padre Martínez is chosen its president.
Part three begins as a rail-thin Bishop Lamy steps out of the stage coach in 1851, surveying the city of Santa Fe, while his inseparable companion and fellow Frenchman, Joseph Machebeuf, scuffles with the baggage. Padre Martínez greets the new prelate, some 20 years his junior, and offers to "school him" in the art of governance. But rather than accept mentorship from a distinguished and accomplished Mexican American cleric, Lamy and Machebeuf decide on a "good cop-bad cop" routine to dismantle the prestige and leadership of Martínez and the local clergy.
The traditional Christmas Eve Mass or misa de gallo, is banned from the Cathedral by Lamy as "too wordly." Local New Mexican businessmen are excluded from socializing functions to let the bishop hobnob with the Americans. A set of "fees" is instituted for prayers at baptisms, marriages, funerals and the like with the threat of denial of sacraments for families who do not tithe.
Martínez warns the bishop that this will be understood by the people as "selling the sacraments." Lamy pays no heed. He disbands the Penitentes, a lay order that conducts prayer services for the sick and dying in remote areas. Finally, the French cleric justifies his disdain for the Spanish-speaking suggesting they have scant intellectual capacity and exhibit a "primitive" morality. Martínez leads a letter-writing effort from laity and clergy in 1854 that cites the bishop's canon law violations before Rome. Lamy excommunicates Padre Martínez in 1858. Now an old and broken man suffering from what we would call Alzheimer's, the New Mexico priest continues his ministry from his private home, never giving up hope of reinstatement until his death in 1867.
I think a multicultural Catholic America would be well served by lifting the excommunication of Padre Martínez. Now that we Latinos and Latinas are emerging as a stalwart new majority of the church in so many places, it is time to reconcile the past. Like the reinstatement of Galileo (1992) and John Hus (2000) this would be the "Un-Excommunication of Padre Antonio José Martínez" as called for by Fr. Juan Romero in his 2006 presentation to the Historical Society of New Mexico.
NB: The book by Willa Cather, Death Comes to the Archbishop¸ is the best known of sources on this drama. But Cather was neither historian nor Catholic. Better is the book by Paul Horgan (1975), although I prefer the slender 1981 volume, But Time and Change, produced by New Mexico's native son, Fray Angélico Chavez.
BY
Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo
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Posted by: juanrvi | October 20, 2009 5:24 PM
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Reinstate Father Martinez- By all means!!!
Delete the gibberish of Cyber-Man, Blog-lady and usa-proletariat-movement- Priceless!!!!
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Posted by: ccnl1 | October 13, 2009 11:12 AM
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EXCOMMUNICATION, ROMA'S TRUMP CARD ON GUILT. Picture it, Hagia Sophia on Friday, July 16,1054 at the offetory of the mass by Cerularius when Humbert places carte blanche in the form of a papal bull on the altar excommunicating Cerularius and his clergy. Hey,the two great P.R. men go at each other and to this day we have the Eastern & the Western churches all by EXCOMMUNICATIONS of each other, Humbert and Cerularius in their behaviour of that day. Is excommunication really what it crack up to be?
Posted by: usapdx | October 12, 2009 2:00 PM
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Noted documentary film maker Paul Espinosa is working on a film documentary on Padre Martinez entitled THE DAWNING OF LIBERTY. PBS some years ago screened Espinosa's US-MEXICAN WAR: 1846-1848, and I look forward to watching on TV the untold story of this "Cura de Taos" (1793-1867). His peers in the NM Territorial Legislature, upon his death, called him "The Honor of His Homeland." New Mexico had been a territory of Spain before becoming a "Department" of Mexico in 1821, and then a Territory of the United States in 1846. A former Mexican nationalist, Padre Martinez significantly helped to broker that transition. When Martinez died, his peers in the NM Territorial Legislature called him "The Honor of His Homeland." In 2004, the NM State Legislature reprised that encomium. For further information, see , a website dedicated to the history and legacy of this liminal and controvesial figure who wrestled with his new bishop about money and power. In 2006, a more than life-sized bronze memorial in honor of this priest-politician was placed in the center of the Taos Plaza.