Lamy of Santa Fe (40 page)

The complaint which they contain against His Illustrious Lordship Lamy is true, just, and honest; for which reason I believe they will merit the worthy attention of Your Holiness; so that by estimating the deeds in their just merits, Your Holiness may then resolve them in the most rational and suitable manner.

With all my soul I regret to find myself the one to reveal such sad truths, which should always be hidden in the pages of history. But their revelation has become necessary, since the spiritual and temporal welfare of the Catholic Faithful of New Mexico depends upon it.

The conduct, Most Holy Father, the hostile conduct of his Illustrious Lordship Señor Lamy without just cause, and without observance of the necessary rituals as demanded by Canon Law, has violently deprived the permanent pastors of the Church of New Mexico of their proper benefices, while substituting in their places other ministers newly emigrated to this country, whom he has favored, conferring on them many benefices, thus leaving our poor previous ministers without their posts of spiritual administrations, and forcing them into the hard position of having to work in menial and crude tasks, in order to make a living.

Our Christian Towns of Indians (converts of Catholicism, as they are), and numbering some 18 towns, are thus also left without spiritual administration, harshly abandoned to their own ignorance; and I have no doubt that within a short time they will revert to their primitive and savage state of idolatry.

With respect to the spiritual administration by Señor Lamy and the greater number of his protected ministers, let me inform Your Holiness that I do not err in stating that even in the barest simplification [my present statement] contains the aspect of truth.

I have been informed that no sooner was Señor Lamy apprised of the accusations thus made than he immediately ordered the Vicar P. Machebeuf to hurry to Rome, for a reason which we suppose was the principal object: to try to mislead with false information, which we hope Your Holiness will not credit, and will consequently take needed action on such an important matter.

Most Holy Father, permit me also to declare that our shortcomings in the past were always excused when we were dependent on the pastorship of the Illustrious Lordship, Señor Zubiría, the Bishop of Durango; for this virtuous Prelate, with his true Apostolic zeal, was able to hold our loyalty and satisfy our spiritual needs; and he carried forward unalterably a good program of peace which certainly prevailed in that most memorable time, throughout all our Towns.

I hope Your Holiness will have the goodness of communicating to me your
decision in this important matter, sending it to Santa Fe, New Mexico, so as to satisfy with your decision the desires of my constituents.

May God Our Lord preserve in His grace the inestimably important Life of Your Holiness: such is the petition of this,

Your most loving son, who humbly implores Your Blessing, and who attentively,

Kisses Your Hands,

J. M. Gallegos,

Delegate of New Mexico in the Congress of the Union.

Supporting his letter, Gallegos enclosed that lengthy catalogue of charges against Lamy and Machebeuf which he had drawn up with Ortiz, and which was signed by twenty representatives and ten members of the legislative council of the legislative assembly of New Mexico, and by three country prefects. The fact that the signers all bore Spanish names dramatized the social animosities of the diocese. In their ten accusations they greatly elaborated their charges: Lamy had annulled certain marriages despite earlier dispensations; had “without fair cause” first divided the parish of Santa Fe and then entirely taken it away from its pastor of twenty years, Juan Felipe Ortiz; had deprived at various times, against the wishes of their parishioners and without canonical warnings, certain named priests of their curacies; had ignored many petitions sent to him (with, in some cases, duplicates to the Holy See) by eminent pastors. The accusations insisted that Machebeuf had been guilty of faults of “much gravity”; that Lamy's imposition of tithes and heavy penalties for non-payment were harmful to the very Church; that four native priests had been retained by Lamy because they had bribed him to do so; that he had condoned Machebeuf's offensive characterizations of certain native marriages; that he had “contrary to our public statutes” taken part in and interfered in political affairs; that Lamy was guilty of other infractions not particularized in order not to “presume upon the High attention of Your Holiness.” The petitioners were sure that what they had already cited must be enough to prove that if Lamy went unchecked, then schism must follow and Protestantism would flourish.

“Wherefore,” they concluded, “Most Holy Father, with all such remarkable facts, and they are so of a certainty, for causes so serious and grave and just, we do beg Your Holiness, and we pray in the most humble and respectful way, that You deign to decree for us, according to our petition, the removal from his place as Bishop of Santa Fe, His Illustrious Lordship Lamy; and the nomination in his place of the Vicar Don Juan Felipe Ortiz, in which individual, we have no doubt in telling Your Holiness, that those qualities stipulated
by Saint Paul as necessary for the exact fulfillment of the heavy episcopal responsibilities, are found.… Such a substitution will return the peace and tranquility to our Church, and will preserve us firm and stable in our true Catholicism, producing at the same time great joy and happiness for the majority of the Faithful of this Bishopric.”

In Rome, all the charges were laid before Machebeuf, and, asked to comment, he hurried to a desk in an office at the Propaganda to work on written refutations. In the loose scramble of his handwriting, his pages looked as though his pen could not keep pace with his thoughts.

“Firstly,” he wrote, in a general rebuttal of the legislative attack sponsored by Gallegos and others, “it is necessary to observe that the inhabitants of New Mexico are generally deprived of all schooling and are little accustomed to governing themselves according to the law of the United States to which they submit since 1846. The immense majority do not know how to read and those who are able to sign their name are considered educated …” He could therefore describe the legislative assembly as “composed of ignorant men, most of them corrupt, dishonest, who hold the people in fear of them, as their old priest has told us. These people are mostly related to each other by different degrees of affinity and the corruption of this society illustrates their prejudice toward a foreign bishop who is obliged to reform their morals.” Out of fear, he declared, “many people sign written contracts without understanding the contents.” It followed, in respect of the charges laid out in the assembly's letter, that it was “not wrong to say that several signed the presentation without knowing what it meant.” The inference to be taken was that Gallegos and Ortiz had drawn up a case to suit themselves for which they had rounded up signatures. (It was clear that this conclusion was sustained by the rhetorical style of the petition itself.)

Going on to specific charges, the vicar general declared that when Lamy was accused of making his famous journey to Durango without specific authority to do so, it was vitally important to consult with Zubiría if he was to function at all. In the matter of the division of the Santa Fe parish, it was necessary only to recall the reason naively attributed to Lamy by Ortiz—that was, for personal gain. The charge would remind anyone of what Ortiz stood to lose for himself. Concerning the claims that Lamy had deprived certain priests of their parishes without warning, “half the territory” knew that on the contrary these pastors, in consequence of the first pastoral letter requiring reforms (which Machebeuf quoted),
had resigned
, “declaring they would never submit” to the bishop's rules. Even so, Lamy gave them a month to reconsider. When they refused to do so, Lamy properly
suspended them. (In certain other more notorious cases, the bishop had suspended certain pastors, because of their scandalous lives, without strictly observing the canonical periods of warning, but at the time he had explained to Archbishop Purcell that matters were too flagrant to permit a delay of discipline.) The accusations against Machebeuf himself were “absurd,” the people themselves had supported him, and even Padre Martínez of Taos, who was one of those against the bishop (“document attached,” showing his signature with those of Ortiz, Lujan, and Chavez), defended Machebeuf in this instance (“document attached”). As for the theological questions raised by the legislators, these displayed the ignorance of men who didn't know what they were talking about, and who perhaps could not even read. For example, what they said about the two annulled marriages was false. “Mgr Lamy had perfectly examined the circumstances.” The charge that Lamy was “playing politics and favoring Protestantism” was simply not so. “His only policies have been to preach the word of God and to work for the salvation of souls, and in this pursuit he has been unjustly attacked by ignorant, dishonest, and corrupt men.” Machebeuf then, as if to illustrate the sort of persons he meant, gave brief but devastating sketches of such as Fathers J. F. Ortiz, Salazar, Lujan, Gallegos, and Martínez, scrupulously adding, about the pastor of Taos, that “we cannot prove anything about the accusation against his morals, but we are certain that public opinion is against him,” and that “his character is so false and deceptive, so
hidden
, so
flattering
, that while seeking to destroy Mgr Lamy, he appears as his best friend in front of other people. Duplicity is thus his dominant trait.” Still, “the truth obliges me to say that he has never failed in a show of personal respect towards” the bishop. A secretarial digest, which did not presume to reach a judgement, was promptly made of Machebeuf's memorandum and was forwarded by Barnabo to Pius IX in accordance with the Pope's command.

All of these loyal arguments were undoubtedly supported further by much spoken discussion between Machebeuf and the office of the Propaganda, and so, too, must have been another matter which in turn had its written statement made at the time in Rome by Machebeuf.

This was of course the wearisome affair of the disputed territories of the border. Zubiría had already proved himself a master of procrastination, and he was far from finished with it as an instrument of policy. At about the time Machebeuf was arriving in Rome, Archbishop Clementi in Mexico City—the apostolic delegate—was writing to the Vatican to say that Lamy was “anxious to hear the outcome about a controversy with the bishop of Durango,” and requesting a Vatican decision based on Zubiría's statement of 1854, which had
never been acknowledged. Clementi therefore sent another copy now. It merely repeated Zubiría's original position—that the
Condado
belonged to him.

Machebeuf in raising the issue again (which he had already reported to the Society in Lyon) cited new factors which since 1854 had radically changed the rationale for a decision—the Gadsden Purchase and the new, and final, borderline between Mexico and the United States. But more—immigration had steadily increased, he said. There was a new county named Doñana now, not only a town by that name, the population had reached close to five thousand, and the people had no spiritual ministrations except infrequent visits from priests from Mexico, below the Rio Grande. Within the year, he cited, a hundred and sixty persons had died without the sacraments, and there had been repeated requests to Lamy, “whom they recognized as their bishop,” for priests from his diocese. But Zubiría had not budged in his position. All Machebeuf could do was to keep the issue alive. He received no decisions, either, to his other protestations while in Rome. But he had done his best. He knew the Court of Rome moved in a stately measure, and in order not to miss his all-important date for catching the last of the autumn crossings westward, he had to hurry off to France in early August to gather up his new party destined for America.

iii
.

Martínez, Gallegos, Politics

F
ATHER
D
AMASO
T
ALADRID
had promptly followed Lamy's letter by moving to Taos to assume his duties as pastor—an act which inspired Padre Martínez to new heights of irascibility. Ill and aging, he already felt put upon, for Lamy clearly had outmaneuvered him. Perhaps there was that in his temperament, too, which reflected the historically unstable character of Taos. There were three related communities in the great Taos Plain. The pre-Hispanic pueblo rose at the base of the mountains to the north. Three miles away to the south, the principal Spanish village of Don Fernando de Taos, scattered with its whitewashed adobe houses, was the seat of the parish and the civil authority. A few miles still further south was the much smaller settlement of the
Ranchos de Taos, whose massive chapel of St Francis served the farming families in the little houses and corrals clustered about it.

In the mid-nineteenth century a United States soldier recorded his view of the area: “the inhabitants of the Valley of Taos are the most turbulent in New Mexico, and the Indians of the Pueblo of Taos still entertain a smothered feeling of animosity against the Americans, which it is well to keep under.” The same could have been said of the recently annexed Mexicans, who had a tradition of revolution and massacre, the latest of which had been thrown against the United States authority only nine years earlier than this summer of 1856. In that, as well as in the revolt of 1837 under the Mexican regime, Martínez was thought to have been active on the side of the rebels. The only authority which he felt necessary was that which he honored in himself. His state of both mind and body, then, disposed him to resentment against Taladrid.

But more—Taladrid himself invited this response; for, a Spaniard born, a familiar of Rome, who had served as a missionary in Africa, he viewed New Mexicans as mere colonials, and as colonials of a low order, at that. He was not slow to show this attitude toward Martínez, who with justice regarded himself as a superior individual, a man of education; indeed, an intellectual man, if measured against his neighbors. Now, instead of the junior recruit he had asked for whom he could train in his own independent Taos attitudes, he had to contend with a mature, sophisticated, and unmannerly priest who, moreover, was the personal choice of the bishop to replace him.