An Adobe PDF copy of my monograph RELUCTANT DAWN, A History of Padre Martinez, Cura de Taos may be downloaded for free at the link:

https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/dd19c44c-b5c5-4edd-8669-6a60e4eb4b23

I willingly accept a freewill offering in any amount that may be sent to me in care of the following address:

Rev. Juan Romero – PO Box 1947 – Palm Springs, CA 92263

If you wish an autographed hard copy, I request a donation of at least $15 that would also cover postage.

Let me know by email <[email protected]>  to whom the book should be dedicated, and where it is to be sent.

You may also order my monograph RELUCTANT DAWN for $16 ($12 + $4/postage) through Amazon at this link:

ASIN/ISBN 1424308100
http://www.amazon.com/shops/thetaosconnection

GOOGLE will give you a peek (sample):
http://books.google.com/books?id=sPPn813WjmsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Reluctant+Dawn,+Romero&hl=en&sa=X&ei=f3iLUobYMsakyAGs1YGQCA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Reluctant%20Dawn%2C%20Romero&f=false

The work ha stood the test of time.  MACC (Mexican American Cultural Center – now called MA College) first published it in 1975.  The Taos Connection published a second edition in 2006 on the occasion of the unveiling of the larger than life-sized Padre Martinez bronze Memorial in the Taos Plaza (LA HONRA DE SU PAIS/The Honor of His Homeland).

 

The unveiling of the more than life-sized bronze memorial of Padre Antonio José Martínez, Cura de Taos took place in the Taos Plaza on July 16, 2006. The title of the memorial, LA HONRA DE SU PAIS/THE HONOR OF HIS HOMELAND was taken from the epitaph on his tombstone coined by the Padre’s peers in the Territorial Legislature of the occasion of his death in 1867.
Senator Carlos Cisneros helped obtain public funding from the State of New Mexico Public Arts Program for the sculpture by Huberto Maestas of San Luis, Colorado. Father Larry Brito, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, blessed the image, and Mr. Edmundo Vasquez—a Presbyterian relative of the Padre—led a prayer of dedication. A delegation of La Cofradía de Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno (Penitentes) was present. Attorney Antonio José Martínez, a family member of the famous Padre, spoke eloquently on the occasion.

AJM-Bissel.Portrait_Text

  Cynthia Bissell, a Taos artist, painted this portrait of Padre Antonio José Martínez, Cura de Taos in 1974. We met on Ledoux Street in Taos between the Harwood Foundation and the studio of R. C. Gorman where Cynthia was on a short roster of artists exhibiting work there since 1969. My grandfather’s house was across the Harwood Library where I was doing research for my monograph Reluctant Dawn,

The portrait of Padre Martínez, Cynthia explained to me, was done on plywood in the style of the retablos at the historic adobe church of San José de Las Trampas in northern New Mexico, one of her favorite places. She sent me the portrait as a gift when I was in San Antonio working with the PADRES organization. Cynthia moved to Arizona, and is now deceased.

Vicente M. Martínez, a close relative of the Padre, took a color photo of the portrait. When the Mexican American Cultural Center published Reluctant Dawn in 1976, the photo was reproduced in black-and-white. However, the portrait was published in color for the second edition of Reluctant Dawn published by The Taos Connection in 2006 on occasion of the instatllation and unveiling of the Padre Martínez Memorial in The Taos Plaza, La Honra de Su País/The Honor of His Homeland.

For almost three years, while I was Executive Director of PADRES, the national organization of Hispanic priests, the portrait hung on the wall of the PADRES headquarters on Ashby Street across from MACC. After I left, my successor lend it to Archbishop Sanchez of Santa Fe who kept it in his residence until he retired in 1993. Father Albert Gallegos of Belen, NM took possesion of it, but the portrait was lost after Father Albert’s death.

On the occasion of my Golden Jublilee as a priest in the spring of 2014, while giving a presentation on the Cura de Taos at the parish church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the portrait resurfaced. The Archdiocese had it in storage, and returned it to “its proper home” at the church in care of its current pastor Rev. Clement Nigel. Padre Martínez had served as pastor of the parish from from 1826 until 1858. As rightful owner of the portrait, I took possession of it, and then immediately inscribed my name and date on the back in testimony of my gifting the portrait to the parish for posterity.

  “It’s worth it!” says Fr. Juan
Romero, ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles fifty years ago on
April 30, 1964.  A decade ago, he retired from
administration, and moved to the Coachella Valley, part of the vast San
Bernardino-Riverside Diocese, where he has been serving as a
“supply-priest” at various parishes. 
On Saturday May 3, 2014 at 3:30 pm, Father Romero celebrated a fifty-year
anniversary Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish in Indio where he spent a
year as a “priest-minister.” 
He will celebrate another anniversary Mass on June 21 at the church of
his baptism, the oft-photographed church of St Francis in Ranchos de Taos in
northern New Mexico.

  “The Golden
Jubilee celebration is a special time to give and praise and thanks to God, and
I do!  As long as the Lord gives me life
and breath, I intend to serve God and His people,” stated the jubilarian.  Friends of Father Juan Romero are arranging
an Alaskan Cruise Inside Passage
from August 29 to September 5. 
“It’s a great time and place to get out of the Valley’s summer
heat.  Welcome aboard!” Romero
invited.  For information on the
Celebrity Solstice Cruise that leaves from Seattle, call (800) 772-0847 and ask
for Father Juan’s Desk.

  Father Romero
recalls the last half-century with some nostalgia, great joy, and a lot of
gratitude.  He has had his share of
excitement and even drama as a priest: walking picket lines with farm workers
and going to jail with them in civil disobedience of unjust injunctions;
marching in protest against the Vietnam War in which a so many were killed, especially
the disproportionate number of Mexican Americans; and participating in
broad-based community organizations such as UNO, United Neighborhoods Organization
in East Los Angeles and other places.  “It
was fun to see regular parishioners from different parishes and Protestant
congregations hold politicians accountable for specific benefits to the broader
community,” he stated. “However, the
most important thing I do and have done is to celebrate Mass, baptize, anoint
the sick, hear confessions and give absolution.”

  For four decades, he
served in a variety of parishes in the far-flung Archdiocese of Los
Angeles—from Santa Barbara to La Habra in north Orange County when it still
belonged to the L.A. Archdiocese.  He was
assigned as pastor to three different parishes throughout the Archdiocese: in
La Puente (now called Valinda), Santa Monica-Venice, and East Los Angeles where
he served three different times.

  Temporarily released
from assignment in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, he twice worked in
specialized Hispanic ministry on the national level. In the mid- ’70s, Father Romero
worked four years out of San Antonio, Texas as executive director of the PADRES
organization.  For one intensive year in 1984-85,
he worked out of Washington, D.C. on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Bishops’
Spanish Speaking Secretariat as the national coordinator of the Tercer Encuentro, “a fascinating
challenge!”Romero described the job.   Meetings within parishes, dioceses, and large regions
composed of groupings of states in a geographical area took place over a period
of a few years with the purpose of producing a national pastoral plan for the country’s Spanish speaking.  “My job was to wrap up the final
phase of the consultation process among Latino Catholics within the United
States, and to set up the logistics for the culminating event of the Tercer Encuentro Hispano de Pastoral at
Catholic University in August 1985. 

  Father Romero remembers
with nostalgia and gratitude the special relationship he enjoyed with Cesar
Chavez and Dolores Huerta.  In November 1972 during the “No on 22
Campaign,” when his family home was unoccupied, Cesar lived in the house for a
month. “He and his staff of about eight people took the place over while Cesar’s
two German shepherd guard-dogs, Boycott and Huelga, commandered the back
yard,” Romero recalled. 

  In April 1973,
Father Romero was part of an inter-religious delegation of clergy and laity who
took a straw poll among workers in the Coachella Valley to ascertain which
union they would prefer to join: the Teamsters or the United Farmworkers. 
“Hands down, it was the UFW,” affirms Romero.  This was during
his PADRES years, and by the late summer that year, Romero spent almost two
weeks “in prayer and fasting” in the Fresno County Jail.  He was in the good company of hundreds of
farmworkers, clergy, religious and lay supporters of farmworkers including
Dorothy Day, the storied apostle of the poor.  “When Chavez died
twenty-one years ago (April 23), I was asked to be in charge of the logistics
for the funeral Mass, and was pleased to do so. 
My own Archbishop and schoolmate, Cardinal Roger Mahony, gave the
homily.”

  Research and writing
about the life and legacy of Padre Antonio José, Cura de Taos (1793-1867), has
been the passionate hobby of Fr. Romero. 
He maintains a blog on the Padre, <thetaosconnecion.com>, has
written a biography on the priest, Reluctant
Dawn, and was the principal catalyst for having the state of New Mexico in
2006 fund and place in the Taos Plaza a larger than life-sized bronze memorial
of the Padre.

  Retired Air Force
Major Tobias Romero, Father Juan’s oldest brother in the seminary for five
years before going into the Air Force, was unable to make the celebration in
Indio because of ill health.  His older
brother Father Gilbert, Ph. D. (from Princeton, Old Testament) ordained in
1961, accompanied Fr. Juan, and gave him a special blessing at the end of the
Anniversary Mass.  Their father J. Tobias
Romero was ordained a Claretian priest in 1975. 
His last employment, before going into the seminary a year after his
wife died in 1969, was as an accountant for CBS. Father Tobias Romero, the
elder, served in ministry for almost twenty-two years before his death in 1996.

  Father Juan Romero
summed up his half-a-century as a priest:

With the prayerful support of family, my priest-support
group and close friends, I have been able to negotiate life’s road with all its
twists and turns, curves and hills with their downs and ups.  There have been plenty of the former, but even
more of the latter.  My life as a priest has
definitely been worth it, a true blessing of the Lord in His service and that
of His people!

 

 

 

 

PADRE MARTINEZ AND PARTISAN POLITICS

by

 Fr. Juan Romero 

January 17, 2014

[Antonio José Martínez was born in Abiquiú, NM on January 17, 1793–the feast day
of San Antonio Abad, father of Western Monasticism and Antonio’s namesake for whom he was baptized a few days later.  I wrote this article several years ago, but publish it on my blog today in honor of the birthday boy born 221 years ago.]

   “Now is the time for all good men (people) to come to the aid of their party!” My paternal grandfather, Juan Bautista Romero, for whom I am named was a man of many talents: teacher, carpenter, poet, and
erstwhile politician.  Grandpa John (as we called him–with a LONG “o”) ran for office both as a Democrat and as a Republican, but never won elective office. Padre Martínez, on the other hand–priest, educator, rancher, printer-publisher, lawyer, and politician–won several elections.  Born in the norther etremity of the Kingdom of Spain in the New World, he served at different times in the legislatures of New Mexico under the flags of both the Republic of Mexico and later that of the United States of America. 

  What was the political party of this priest-politician of New Mexico in the mold of his ideological mentors Padres Hidalgo and Morelos of New Spain on its way to becoming the Republic of Mexico? Santiago Valdez, the biographer of Padre Martinez writing in 1877, a decade after the Padre’s death, claimed the Padre belonged to the “Democratic Party.”[1] However, it was not the Democratic Party we know today.

  The Democratic Party looks to Thomas Jefferson
as its founding spirit, and the Republican Party to Alexander Hamilton
whose Federalist ideals are among their guiding principles.  Both Founding Fathers Jefferson and Hamilton are giants of American democracy in our republic we call the United States of America.  

  During an “era of good feeling” with its political rivals, the Federalist Party was disappearing, and the Whig Party replaced it by 1815. The so-called Democratic, or anti-slavery party of 1846-1851, was not synonymous with today’s Democratic Party, but existed in opposition to
the Whigs.  It began in opposition to the Federalists who held fast to the principle of states’ rights, a key plank in their platform. However, in its early years, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Democratic Party confusingly became known by the hyphenated  name Democratic-Republican Party.    

  This political party favored France in the wars between Britain and France, but its hyphenated name indicates that the core concepts defining the identity of political parties were fluctuating. Nevertheless,the Democratic-Republican Party was clear about one thing: they were against the Whigs. These successors to the Federalists advocated a strong central government, a more relaxed interpretation of the Constitution, and a republic run by a more professional and educated class.

    Antonio José Martínez was born in 1793 as a citizen of Spain in an America that that was still part of the Kingdom of Spain until 1821. In the 1820s, the Democratic-Republican Party began to morph into
what would eventually become two distinct political parties–the Democratic and Republican parties that we know today. The Federalist Party as such no longer existed in the mid-nineteenth century when New Mexico became a Territory of the United States and native New Mexican settlers became U.S. citizens.

  During his seminary days and young manhood, Antonio
José Martínez imbibed the principles of the Enlightenment. As a seminary student, Martínez excelled in canon (church) law, and had a an interest in politics as practiced by Padres Hidalgo and Morelos, architects of the Mexican Republic. He lived through and embraced Mexican Independence, and became a fervent Mexican nationalist promoting principles of freedom and democracy.

 By the mid 1830s, a priest for more than a decade, Padre Martínez had several times already been elected to political office in order to represent the Departamento de Nuevo Mexico (analogous to a state) in the legislature of the Republic of Mexico. By 1842, he requested and received from Governor Armijo permission to practice law as a civil lawyer in order to help the poor.  He appreciated the political system of the United States as enunciated ithe country’s founding documents, and admired Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. At the brink of the nineteenth century in 1799, the former was breathing his last breath when  the boy Martínez was six years old. The latter, a contemporary of the Padre, was untimely assassinated a couple of years before the Padre’s own death in 1867.

 After 1830, the Democratic Party in the United States had become a coalition of farmers, city dwelling laborers, and Irish Catholics. The Cura de Taos might have been attracted to such a political party that welcomed Irish Catholics. He most likely would have been in deep sympathy with the Democratic Party’s opposition to anti-immigrant nativists who held strongly negative views about all foreigners, or native-born Catholics, Jews and Negroes.

  However, Padre Martínez most likely would have initially opposed the Democrats’ embrace of the War with Mexico, the expulsion of eastern American Indians, and the acquisition of vast amounts of new land in the West. He also most likely would not have favored unlawful expansion of settlers squatting on land owned by him or anyone else among his broadly extended family or other New Mexican long-time settlers.

  Padre Martínez explicitly and vociferously opposed the process of Manifest Destiny, but after a process of mature deliberation, his political thinking shifted. He decided that New Mexico would be better off under the flag of the United States rather than that of the Mexican Republic.  Soon after occupying New Mexico in the name of the United States Government, General Stephen Watts Kearney invited the Padre to Santa Fe in August 1846.  His biographer Santiago Valdez in 1877, a
decade after the Padre’s death, described the meeting:

General Kearny invited all the prominent men of the Territory to visit him at the
capital, and Padre Martinez was tendered a special invitation…Padre Martinez, accompanied by his brothers [all escorted by Captain Charles Bent and his men]…left for Santa Fe, [and] during this visit, all three were sworn in as American citizens.[2]

  Almost immediately after his return from Santa Fe, in September 1846, Padre Martinez transformed into a law school the preparatory seminary that, with the full permission and encouragement of his Bishop
Zubiría of Durango, he had begun at his home in Taos more than a decade prior. Sixteen young men who had begun their preparatory education for the priesthood with Padre Martínez were eventually ordained to serve as clergymen throughout New Mexico. Padre Martínez, however, was now convinced that henceforth, instead of the clergyman,the attorney would be the one to “ride the burro”.[3]  The young men who studied at his law school went on to become attorneys and politicians to influence the development of New Mexico for years to come.

  General Kearny appointed Governor Donaciano Vigil in early 1847 to succeed the assassinated Governor Charles Bent, and Vigil selected Padre Martinez to preside over a Convention held in Santa Fe in
October 1847. One of the principal tasks of this convention was to facilitate transition from a military government to one purely civil in character. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 formally concluded the U.S.-Mexican War.  As a consequence, the whole swath of land
north of Mexico that we call the American Southwest—including the vast territory of New Mexico that at the time also included Arizona and sections of Utah, Wyoming and Texas—transitioned from territory belonging to the Republic of Mexico to territory under the government of the United States of America.

  Having as a legislator in the Assembly of the
Departamento de Nuevo Mexico (analogous to a “state”) of the Mexican
Republic, Padre Martinez was elected “Senator of the First Senatorial District of Taos and Rio Arriba” and “embraced the Democratic or anti-slavery party”.[4]  In Santa Fe on October 12, 1850, Padre
Martinez presided over the second General Convention of the New Mexico as a Territory of the United States.  That assembly
requested the U.S. Congress abolish military rule and establish Civil
Government in New Mexico.

  By 1851, there was a third Convention of New Mexico, a Territory of the United States no longer under Military Rule. In preparation for elections, New Mexicans were choosing the political party to
which they wanted to belong as citizens of the United States.  However, the choices were still largely limited to either the Democratic-Republican Party or the Whigs Party.  Although the national Democratic Party and
the Republican Party were each in their infancy, neither party was quite formed in its present state nor yet very well known.  The question remained: what was the political affiliation of Padre Martínez during the American period?

 Marta Weigle in Brothers of Light, Brothers of Blood, her classic treatment of the Penitentes (the New Mexican-southern Colorado folk society whose members were known for their great devotion to the Passion of Christ), hints that he may have been a Republican insofar as many of the moradas (gathering centers for Penitentes) seem to have also been strongholds for the Republican Party. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) came into existence in 1848, the year of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ratified the results of the U.S.-Mexican War.
 By the 1860s, especially after the Civil War, the Whigs would also fade away completely. The Republican Party, conceived in 1850, took some years for party identity and loyalty to develop.  Within a decade, it became the “anti-slavery” party in which Abraham Lincoln ran and won as its first presidential candidate.

  The so-called “Democratic Party,” to which Santiago Valdez, the biographer of Padre Martinez, claimed the Padre belonged, was more accurately the Democratic-Republican Party that identified itself in opposition to the Whigs. The issue of slavery helped bring political identity into focus. Democrats and Whigs were divided on the issue of slavery. Democrats in Congress, especially those of the so-called “solid south,” passed the hugely controversial pro-slavery Compromise of 1850, while the Territorial Government of New Mexico was taking shape.

  Under the leadership of Padre Martinez, New Mexico—in opposition to the Democratic “solid South”—insisted New Mexico be admitted into the Union as a Free State.  In state after state, the Democrats gained
small but permanent advantages over the Whig Party that finally collapsed in 1852.  Division over slavery and its nativist leanings against immigrants and “foreigners,” especially those of Jewish or Catholic heritage, had fatally weakened Democratic-Republican Party. Democratic
leader Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois–the future debate-rival of Abraham
Lincoln—pushed through the pro-slavery Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 that repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. According to the principle of “popular sovereignty,” the Act opened the Midwest territories to slavery. In reaction to this, anti-slavery activists and individuals conceived the Republican Party in the early 1850’s, and the first official Republican meeting took place in 1854. The name “Republican” was chosen because it alluded to equality, and reminded individuals of Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party. They believed that government should grant western lands to settlers free of charge. In 1856, the Republicans became a national party when John C. Fremont was nominated for President, and Abraham Lincoln four years later became the first to win the White House as a member of the Republican Party.

  Padre Martínez admired his contemporary Abraham Lincoln, considered the founder of the modern Republican Party.  By the time Lincoln was elected President of the Country, Padre Martínez was in decline on many levels–in ill health with only a few years left until his own death in 1867. Furthermore, against the backdrop of the slavery issue, new issues, new parties, and new rules were forcing a major re-alignment of political parties among voters and politicians. While the Democrats survived the challenges, many northern Democrats joined the newly established Republican Party. Was Padre Martinez among them?

THE INVALIDITY OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL CENSURE AGAINST PADRE ANTONIO JOSE MARTINEZ

 A Presentation for the New Mexico Historical Society

On the Occasion of the 300^th Anniversary of the

Founding of Albuquerque

 April 22, 2006

 by

 Rev. Juan Romero

 Happy birthday Albuquerque!  In the early1940s, at the dawn of my consciousness, our family lived here for a while.  We came from Taos to this city’s lower elevation for mom’s health, but then we moved to Los Angeles in 1943 for dad’s job with Lockheed Aircraft.  From family members and from a large glass-encased poster at the edge of the Taos Plaza, I first learned about Padre Antonio José Martinez, Cura de Taos.  In mid July of this year, ten days before the anniversary of his death in 1867, Padre Martinez will be commemorated with a life-sized bronze likeness to be placed in the center    of the Taos Plaza.  It will reprise what his peers in the New Mexico Territorial Legislature wrote on his tombstone: “La Honra de Su Paíz-The Honor of His Homeland.”[1] 

Tradition preserved in the personal papers of his youngest brother Pascual Martinez[2] claims that Padre Martinez died repeating the Our Father.  The operative words in this context would be “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” and the mutuality of forgiveness prayed for would be Padre Martinez and Bishop Lamy. 

The 1877 Valdez biography[3] records the early life of Padre Martinez with several letters and documents, but says very little about his life after the arrival of Bishop Lamy.  The Pascual Martinez papers record that Padre José Lucero, his former student, good friend and pastor of the neighboring Arroyo Hondo parish attended Martinez upon his deathbed.  It is the common teaching of theologians that a person with good dispositions of love of God and sorrow for sin, and who receives the Church’s Last Rites–consisting of the sacraments of Penance, Anointing of the Sick and Holy Communion– upon death, goes directly to heavenly glory.  A month before he died, Padre Martinez revised his Last Will and Testament[4] that gives us an insight into his dispositions.

I declare that during the forty-two years
of my spiritual administration in several parts of this Territory of New Mexico, and particularly in this County of Taos, I have complied with my ecclesiastical ministry with fidelity and good faith to the best of my knowledge that I could….My body shall descend tranquil to the silent grave, and my soul shall appear and go up to the Divine Tribunal with plain satisfaction that I have done all that I could to illuminate the minds of my fellow citizens causing them their temporal good, and above all, their spiritual benefit….My conscience is quiet and happy, and God knows this to be true.  If anyone of my fellow citizens and neighbors complains that I have injured them, it may have been through a mental error, but not with the intention of my heart, as human creatures are weak…  Nevertheless, I have never had any intention of injuring anyone, and by nature, I have been inclined to do good, so help me God. 

Bishop Zubiría of Durango attested to the high moral character of Padre Martinez. He visited Taos three times in his tenure of the far-flung diocese of Durango that included New Mexico as it was then constituted: Colorado, Arizona, Utah and parts of Texas and Wyoming.  When the bishop visited in 1833, he acceded to Padre Martinez request to begin a pre-seminary to prepare young men for further study in Durango.  Padre Martinez had begun an elementary school in 1826, and his seminary would morph into a law school after the American occupation in 1846. 

In 1840, Padre Martinez had spent a year on sabbatical in Durango, the see of the Archdiocese at the time (and for eleven more years to come).  He caught up with course work since, because of illness, he had left seminary after ordination in 1822 but before he finished some theology courses.  This became an impediment for promotion to a “permanent” pastorate, although since 1826 he had been “interim” pastor of the Taos Church (San Geronimo at the Pueblo and its main chapel Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe at the Plaza). After his year, he was formally appointed CURA DE TAOS, the title for which he has been known in history.

When the Bishop Zubiría visited again, for the third time, in 1845, he ratified Martinez’ appointment as an permanent pastor.[5]   “He not only approved the records of Padre Martinez, but even thanked him for his skill and energy in performing his duties as minister.  As a matter of recognition, he granted Padre Martinez additional privileges for his well deserved merits.”[6]  Appointing him as “Vicar and Ecclesiastical  Judge” of Our Lady of Guadalupe parish “and its districts”[7] of the northern region, Bishop Zubiría  also gave Padre Martinez the “special faculty and power to absolve…heretics and also to rehabilitate or to suspend, as he may deem proper and according to his conscience, any priest who may deserve to be rehabilitated or suspended.”[8] These special faculties were valid for a period of five years ending September 18, 1850.[9] 

Although he had more than his share of political enemies, Charles Bent chief among them because of disagreements about land use and ownership, Padre Martinez was nevertheless  held in very high regard by the majority of the people of Taos and all of New Mexico.  By contrast, Willa Cather, in her Pulitzer Prize winning novel[10]––“the best novel ever about New Mexico”[11]—spoke for many of the Padre’s enemies[12] when she described the Padre as an ogre writhing in hell.  She may have been inspired to imagine Martinez there because of the inimical relation between Padre Martinez and the hero of the novel, a fictional and glorified version of Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy.  

In the fall of 1856, almost a decade before Martinez died, Lamy censured the Padre with Suspension whose vality Padre Martínez—ever the Canonist—legally challenged.  The following year, in the spring of 185, Bishop Lamy excommunicated Padre Martínez “with all of the required formalities…servatis servandi.”[13]  Here is how one author described the dramatic scene of the excommunication:

Machebeuf appeared in the Taos church [of
Our Lady of Guadalupe] to celebrate High Mass and to pronounce the excommunication.  Tension was almost tangible.  The church was filled, and the people stood outside to hear the ceremony and to watch each other, and to see
who had guns.  When time came for the
sermon, Mauchebuf explained the meaning of excommunication of which most people had no understanding except that it was the Church’s ultimate discipline; and then he read the instrument itself to a hushed congregation and finished the Mass…There was no disturbance, though everyone felt the precarious atmosphere…[14]

The “instrument” of excommunication, part of “all the required formalities,” was likely from the Roman Pontifical containing ceremonies used by a Bishop in the nineteenth century:

Since I, [Name of Bishop], having legitimately warned [him] for the first, second, third and fourth times of the malice for which he is being convicted for whatever he has done or not done,  and since he has shown contempt for fulfilling my command to renounce his contumacy,[15]  and since he is remaining stubborn [exigente] in his rebelliousness, I therefore excommunicate him with these written words:  By the authority of the omnipotent God Father, and the Son and Holy Spirit, and by the authority of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints, I denounce him.  He is to be avoided [vitandus] for as long a time as it may take until he will have fulfilled what is mandated, in order that his spirit may be saved on the day of judgment.[16]

Joseph P. Mauchebeuf, Vicar General for Bishop Lamy and later first bishop of Denver, is the one who pronounced the excommunication, according to Howlett, author of Mauchebeuf’s biography. A couple of years later on July 1, 1860, Bishop Lamy himself came to Our Lady of Guadalupe parish to administer the sacrament of Confirmation to over 500
adults and children of the Jurisdiction of Taos.   He put this note in the book of Baptism records of the parish:

Since our last visit [to the parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe] in August of 1855 until the present date, various pastors have succeeded in this Jurisdiction whom we had to move for grave and critical circumstances….It is our painful obligation to observe here that at the beginning of the year 1857, we had to punish with suspension Sñr. Cura Martinez for his grave and scandalous faults and for his publications against order and the discipline of the church. Regretfully, however, he did not pay attention to the censures, and before long, he began to say Mass, administer the sacraments, and to publish things even more scandalous.  We then saw ourselves obliged to excommunicate him, servatis servandis, with all of the required formalities.  Since that time, this unfaithful [infeliz] priest has done all in his power, and in a most diabolical manner, to provoke a schism in public as well as in private, pretending to say Mass, administer the sacraments, and thus
loosing a great number of souls. However,  in spite of this schism, the major part of the faithful remain on the side of order and of legitimate authority, as this book of entries proves…Thus it is that while some lose faith, because they have forsaken good works, others are strengthened in
procuring the good of souls and the glory of God.[17] 

Only God is judge of ultimate destiny. However, the passage of time and critical history helps to evaluate a person’s rightful place in the earthly hall of merits and accomplishments. Antonio José Martinez was a liminal man of both the church and of the nation.  His life was at the threshold of three distinct eras that spanned the history of New Mexico, under Spain (two and a quarter centuries), under Mexico (twenty-five years), and under the United States since 1846.  As an actor and positive contributor to each distinct epoch, he was on the threshold of each, and helped his people of New Mexico segue one to another, sometimes with pain and/or struggle.  He was a churchman, rancher, educator, journalist, printer, publisher, lawyer and politician who lived in a time of great transition.  He was a man of the people, and one of the great figures of New Mexican history.  Although there were shadows in his life, the light emanating from him far outshone any darkness.  Indeed, he was a luminary of this time, a renaissance man only now coming to be better and more widely appreciated. 

His ecclesiastical superiors held Antonio José Martinez in very high regard as a seminarian in Durango.  He excelled in his studies, especially in philosophy and canon law. Bishop Castañiza who ordained Martinez favored him, and even considered appointing him as a first assignment to La Parroquia, the principal parish in Santa Fe, precursor to the Cathedral.  Bishop Zubiría who succeeded Bishop Castañiza also recognized the talents of the priest of Taos and showed his appreciation of him on all three of his visits to Taos: in 1833, in 1845, and in 1850 on the eve of the great transition. 

On his third and last visit in 1850, barely a year before Bishop Lamy arrived in Santa Fe, Bishop Zubiría gave Padre Martinez special faculties that again showed his complete confidence in the Priest of Taos.  Among the faculties, ironically, was to absolve penitents from suspension and excommunication.

The mid 1840s encompassed the “transcendent epoch” that brought tumultuous changes to New Mexico.  The engine was Manifest Destiny, the U.S.-MEXICAN WAR was the powerful train that came into New Mexico in 1846.  Its caboose was the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and its railroad tracks continue to lead forward defining and shaping our own place and time.  Territories that had belonged to Spain since 1598, and then to Mexico since1821, now became territories of the United States of America. The political change affected church organizational structure.  By 1850, New Mexico was taken from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Durango in Mexico and became an Apostolic Prefecture under the Archdiocese of St. Louis, Missouri in the United States until Santa Fe became its own Diocese and later Archdiocese.

The historic tension between France and Spain was a backdrop for the cultural clash that was to distance the new Vicar Apostolic Jean Baptiste Lamy from New Mexico’s native clergy that Padre Martinez helped so much to develop. The 1850 Council of Baltimore decided to bring the new US territory under American ecclesiastical sway.  They nominated French missionary J. B.  Lamy as first Vicar Apostolic of Santa Fe who was a French-born missionary serving as a parish priest in the diocese of Cincinnati, Ohio.  Arriving in New Mexico in July of 1851, he was destined to become the bishop of the new Santa Fe diocese.  His territory of New Mexico included what is now the state of New Mexico in addition to all of Arizona and Colorado and parts of Texas, Nevada, Wyoming, and Utah. 

The initial encounters between Bishop Lamy and Padre Martinez were cordial, even warm and gracious.  Lamy seemed to genuinely appreciate the canonical acumen of Padre Martinez.  However, the pride and stubbornness of each soon began to show.  The conflict between them was, at its core, a conflict of culture more than of theology or morality.  The tension was expressed around issues concerning transition of power and authority.

One of the principal points of conflict between Padre Martinez and Bishop Lamy was Lamy’s reinstitution of the practice of tithing.  In the European model of Church-State union, the government was responsible for maintaining the churches and paying salary to the clergy.  As early as 1829, eight years into the Mexican period, Padre Martinez already was objecting to the practice.  He stated it was a burden too heavy for poor people, and advocated for a change in policy.  By 1833, he was a member of the New Mexican legislature and—with the approbation of Bishop Zubiría—successfully advocated  for a change in the law that ultimately eliminated government-sponsored tithing.  Martinez promoted free will offerings in church.  

Bishop Lamy’s Pastoral Letter that initiated the renewed policy on tithing was written in December 1852, but it was not printed nor promulgated until early 1853.  When Bishop Lamy re-instituted tithing under pain of denial of Christian burial, [18] it seemed excessively harsh to Padre Martinez who publicly denounced it in the press, the Santa Fe Gaceta,  as “hucksterism” and “simony.”[19] The Pastoral ran counter to serious objections by several of the local clergy, and did not begin to be fully implemented until 1854.  The text of the Pastoral was a brief document of three pages with seven points dealing with routine liturgical and catechetical concerns.  The fifth and sixth seriously offending points tried to launch a fund raising campaign redounding to the economic hardship of clergy and faithful. Those faithful who did not comply were deprived from church burial.[20] In addition, the renewed  system of tithing reduced the income of the priests by about a third. 

Bishop Lamy in 1856 suspended Padre Martinez from celebrating Mass, preaching,  and hearing Confessions because of his public scandalous writings that attacked him in the public press. The Padre responded with a legalistic letter outlining why the suspension was invalid, because it lacked three canonical warnings.[21]  Padre Martinez was convinced of the invalidity of the suspension from his study of Canon Law,  in which he was a recognized expert, and from the church law books available to him.  However, Bishop Lamy, admittedly not all well versed in Canon Law,  may have been operating out of an understanding of church law based on different text.  There was a canon that permitted the legitimate suspension of a priest “on the basis of an informed awareness”  Jesuit canonist Ladislas Orsay brought this [ex consciencia informata] to the attention of Fr. Tom Steele, S.J. as a possible way Bishop Lamy wanted to deal with Padre Martinez in order to avoid even greater public scandal since the Padre was so widely respected by the people, it is supposed.  This was intended to give a bishop maximum latitude in censuring a priest whose circumstances of suspension the bishop might not want to make public for whatever reason.[22]

Almost a thousand people, including several Washington politicians, signed a letter complaining against Bishop Lamy and his Vicar Machebeuf.  Padre José Miguel Gallegos—after a serious tiff with Vicar J. P. Machebeuf, left active ministry and became a politician, the first Hispanic Congressman in the U.S.—drafted the letter and sent it to the Holy Father.  Although Gallegos orchestrated the letter of complaint to Pope Pius IX against Bishop Lamy and Vicar Machebeuf, these hierarchs may have held Padre Martinez responsible for having formed and influenced the former priest and pesky Congressman Gallegos.  I believe the embarrassment of Bishop Lamy and Vicar Machebeuf before the Holy See was one of the main events that triggered Martinez’ extreme disfavor with Bishop Lamy. 

Since 1852, people complained to Bishop that Vicar General Macebeuf was breaking the seal of Confession.  The Bishop told the people that he would take care of it, but did nothing. They again complained, this time with the suggestion they would go to higher authority. After being effectively dismissed, Señor Tomás Baca—with at least the passive consent of Padre Gallegos–helped to garner over 900 signatures of people complaining about Machebeuf’s behavior. 

Meanwhile, Bishop Lamy suggested to his Vicar General Joseph Prospectus Macebeuf that he consult with Padre Martinez about the canonical dimensions of the allegation of direct violation of the seal of Confession.  Martinez was at first disposed to believe that Machebeuf was guilty,  but may have been pleased to be consulted in the affair.  After hearing Machebeuf’s version of what happened, Padre Martinez wrote to Bishop Lamy that he “was satisfied”[23] with Machebeuf’s explanation.  Martinez asserted in his letter to Lamy that Machebeuf was most likely carried away with overzealous preaching, but was not actually guilty of “direct violation” of the Seal of Confession.  Ironically, this letter would be used get Machebeuf off the proverbially papal hook when the matter once again surfaced before Roman authorities in the summer of 1856. 

[Another Topic: Padre Gallegos]

binding.  (My emphasis)  What’s to re-examine?  It was an invalid act of excommunication.  There’s no such thing as rescinding an invalid act.  It is per se invalid …You can’t rescind an invalid act. …There is no evidence of any trial by peers, as was required by the Canon Law at the time, and there was no evidence of allowing Martinez to defend himself….He [Lamy] could very well not have been [aware of the procedure].  I think it would be very important [to publicly declare the excommunication invalid]….I’d think that it’s really important to rehabilitate him.…The much good that he did do should be honored….The importance of the rehabilitation of Padre Martinez is not for the person per se, but for what he symbolized.

Both baptism and funeral books of Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Taos mention the excommunication.  Servite priest Father Albert Gallegos, New
Mexico native and PADRES pioneer, authored a chapter on the canonical dimensions of the excommunication in Ray John Aragon’s book Lamy and Martinez.  In his book But Time and Chance [Sunstone Press], Fray Angelico Chavez challenges the notion that there was any real excommunication of Padre Martinez, much less schism.  Anyone
excommunicated as a vitandus, i.e., one to be avoided or shunned, is supposed to have his name published in the Roman publication the Acta Apostolica Sedis.  Before the publication of that journal, the names of vitandi—those TO BE AVOIDED—would have been inscribed at the Vatican in the Second Section of the tomes in the library of the Secretariat of State.  I did a thorough search of all Martinez names in the 19^th
century, and found several.  However, during my research  at the beginning of the Jubilee Year 2000, I found no mention of any excommunication of Padre A.J. Martinez of Taos in any of the three Vatican Archives: 1)  the archives of the Secretariat of State,  2) Secretariat of State-Segunda Seccione (a confidential section reserved for records of  high profile or political cases), and 3)  the Archives of the Propagation of the Faith, now called the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, that had jurisdiction over the United States during its missionary phase after Independence from England until the end of the nineteenth century. 

Notification of a formal excommunication  should have certainly been recorded in Rome, and most certainly in the archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.  However, there is no record in either place, and this means that if there were any kind of an excommunication,  it had to have been a purely local affair that was kept private for pastoral reasons, and not promulgated. 

In an unprecedented moment on March 12, 2000, the First Sunday of Lent of the Jubilee Year 2000, Pope John Paul II knelt in St. Peter’s Basilica, and said, “We humbly ask forgiveness.” The Holy Father’s words and gestures were “the most sweeping papal apology ever, repenting for the errors of his church over the last 2,000 years.”     In the name of the Church, he was asking forgiveness from God for key lapses which she has committed over the past two millennia.  While the Holy Father was leading the Catholic world in a communal examination of our collective historical conscience, he acknowledged that church followers had “violated the rights of ethnic groups and peoples, and shown contempt for their cultures and religious traditions.”   (My emphasis) 

John Paul II continued, “The church of today and of always feels obligated to purify the memory of those sad episodes of every sentiment of rancor or rivalry.  (My emphasis) The jubilee becomes in this way for every occasion an opportunity for a profound conversion to the Gospel.  From the acceptance of divine forgiveness is born the duty to forgive one’s brothers and seek reciprocal reconciliation.”

Vatican theologians explained the Pope’s apology for past sins of the church by saying that although the responsibility for sin does not pass from one generation of people to the next, “the wounds created by sin do often linger and may require judgment and repentance back through history.” (My emhphasis)

Since he announced the Jubilee Year in his 1994 apostolic letter written to the Catholic world On Reconciliation, John Paul followed up that
important act of reconciliation with even more dramatic gestures, e.g., the posthumous nullification of the sixteenth century excommunication of the scientist Gallileo.  More recently, there was a statement of reconciliation with pioneer Protestant John Hus. 

In sympathetic ceremonies held in cathedrals throughout the Catholic world, bishops made similar acts of repentance on March 12, 2000 and specified them according to their own local histories.  In Santa Fe, Archbishop Michael Shean asked forgiveness for sins against the American Indian, women, and black peoples.  However, there was no
specific apology for the systematic reduction of the native clergy soon after the American occupation in the mid nineteenth century.  Several were suspended from functioning in their ministry.  Padre Martinez, who in spite of his brilliance and long legacy of priestly service to his people, ended his life alienated from his bishop and excommunicated from the church.  The church is holy, but is stained by the
sins of its children, and requires “consant purification.”  The “new evangelization” for which the Pope has been calling in this third millennium can take place only after there be a church-wide “purification of memory.” “One of the characteristic elements of the great jubilee is purification of memory,” [Emphasis mine] stated Pope John Paul II.  “…in this year of mercy, the church, strengthened by the holiness that she receives from her Lord, kneels before God and begs for forgiveness for past and present sins of her sons….We forgive and we ask forgiveness!….”

Lynn Bridgers wrote in DEATH’S DECEIVER, The Life of Joseph P. Machebeuf [1997 University of New Mexico Press – Albuquerque, pp. 268] wrote the following about the historical relationship between the French and Spanish that I believe is accurate and interesting background for the relationship between Martinez and Lamy:

A legacy of mutual distrust between the Spanish and the French served as the rocky river bed over which many Anglo and Hispanic conflicts flowed.  With the arrival of Lamy and Machebeuf, the French seemed to have accomplished ecclesiastically what they were unable to do militarily, moving their sphere of influence from the French lands of the Louisiana Purchase into traditionally Spanish-dominated New Mexico….Machebeuf’s personal views of Hispanic culture reflect a long complex process of maturation.  His early work was sometimes darkened by ignorance and misconceptions about New Mexico’s Hispanic Catholicism, but by the end of his life he had grown far beyond mere tolerance, to a deep love and respect for the Spanish-speaking people of the American Southwest. 

On February 3, 1869, a year and a half after the death of Padre Martinez,  Bishop Lamy reported on progress of vocations to his mentor Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati. Lamy mentions a “schism” in Taos, but makes no mention of  any excommunication that is supposed to have taken place the Sunday after Easter  in 1858 or at any other time.  In an obiter dictum, Lamy mentions “a Schism” that Padre Martinez “made” (sic) in 1860.  Lamy tells Purcell of the “Mission Jesuit
priest Father Gaspari was giving in Taos where “the unfortunate Martinez made a Schism that Lasted seven years [1860-1867] until the death of this said poor priest…. Most of the people, except some of his nearest relatives are coming back to obedience, and the mission which is producing a great change which leaves very few…”  However, Lamy does not refer to any excommunication.  

Was an excommunication actually  made?  Was the prior suspension “secret,” i.e., ex consciencia informata, as some opine? Father Tom Steele, S.J. refers to Jesuit canonist Ladislaus Orsay in reference to the ecclesiastical penalty of “suspension from divine things” (celebrating Mass, preaching, hearing confessions).   Under certain circumstances, a bishop—without making it public—could invoke suspension of official license or faculties (permission) for a priest to act publicly in his diocese.  There would have to be good reason for a bishop to not make a suspension public, and it would need to be “from an informed conscience”  and for some greater good.  Nevertheless, it remains curious that Bishop Lamy did not ever publicly mention an excommunication of Padre Martinez  to episcopal peers or to family, to whom he often wrote about those pesky native  New Mexican priests.  Lamy does not mention the phrase about excommunication that he twice wrote in the parish books (Funerals and Baptism) of  the Taos church:  “…excommunication [of the unfortunate (infelíz) priest]…with all the required formalities…servatis servandis.“

[12] Padre

GUERRA MEXIO AMERICANA

Benjamin Maurice Read,
pioneer native New Mexican historian, in 1910 wrote from his perspective a history
of the US-Mexican War waged from the occupation of Santa Fe by US forces on
August 18, 1846 to the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of February 2, 1848.  A century and a half after the occupation, my
Uncle Tom (my father’s younger brother by seven years) helped me translate
eleven chapters from Spanish to English. 
Recently, Antonio José Martínez (it’s no accident this Harvard-trained
lawyer for Amazon Books has the same name as the famous Cura de Taos) nudged me
hard to finish the work.  With the help
of his father Vicente, with whom I have for years been collaborating about the
Padre, the work of translation is almost completed.  UNM Press has shown interest in publishing it.
Stay tuned!

POPE FRANCIS IN BRAZIL
  For the past six weeks, I have been helping to celebrate Masses at Big Bear Lake,
CA (almost the same altitude as Taos!) while the pastor has been away.  It has been a welcome relief from the
desert’s summer heat where I reside, but am now returning to help out at a
parish in Cathedral City. 

 This past weekend has been
especially busy for me: four weekend Masses and two sessions of Confessions
that is pretty routine.  What made it “busier” than usual, but at
the same time so JOYFUL and ENJOYBLE, was trying to keep up with Pope Francis
and the THREE MILLION PLUS young people with him in Brazil.  What an
extraordinary event!  Through the miracle
of wi-fi and computer, I was able to keep tabs on what was happening.  My
guardian angel woke me before 5 AM on Sunday, on time to watch what led up to
the Mass and its celebration on Copacabana Beach below the giant image of
Christ the King.  I was reminded of the final scene in Slum Dog
Millionaire that has about a hundred young people doing a dance routine between
two long lines of stationary railroad cars.  MULTIPLY THAT to equal
3,000,000 plus!  Before the liturgy began, Pope Francis viewed that choreographed
homage from a TV in the sacristy.  All banners were lowered, and a
reverential silence ensued immediately preceding the Mass.

  The Pope’s most historic and well-received visit to Brazil was strong in both
style, but more importantly in substance.  I commend Canadian Catholic
media outlet Salt and Light for their
excellent live coverage in the U.S. and throughout the English-French speaking
world and beyond http://saltandlighttv.org/live/

   (Not unrelated Congratulations
to the parents of the newly born royal baby! 
By the way, the infant has the same
name (besides that of several of his ancestors) as our new American pope (from the continent of America) given at
his baptism—JORGE that means Geroge.

  A few coming dates important to me personally:

August 31 – my 75th birthday; October 23 – my dad’s hundredth birthday; he died in 1996; April 30, 2014 – my 50th anniversary as a priest

E-mail
address for The Taos Connection: [email protected]