Catholic Thought discussion

Book 3 - The Mass at Acoma

At long last Bishop Latour sets out with his guide Jacinto to get to know his Vicarate. His goal is to go to Acoma and on his way he stops in Albuquerque and meets Padre Gallegos who is more interested in worldly pleasures than tending his flock. It is clear he will have to be replaced. From there they travel to Isleta and meet the old priest Padre Jesus de Baca and his parrots. A little talk with Father Jesus revealed that he was simple almost to childishness, and very superstitious. But there was a quality of golden goodness about him. On they journey to Laguna and the Bishop traverses a mesa landscape he had never encountered before. He and Jacinto spend the night under the stars. Finally they arrive at Acoma, an impressive mesa serving as a fortress with the village on top, the only access to it by a steep trail cut into the rock. Here Bishop Latour celebrates a Mass he found very hard to preside over, for he got the sense it had not touched anyone attending. On the way back he stops again at Isleta, and Father Jesus tells him the story of a priest long ago at Acoma who had come to a very ignoble end of his own making.

The historical figure of José Manuel Gallegos lived an interesting life. Unfortunately there isn’t too much detail in the Wikipedia entry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%...

Acoma is an impressive sight!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoma_P...
FYI, to see more pictures, enter ‘Acoma Pueblo’ into your search engine and click “images”.

Book 4 – Snake Root

Father Gallegos gets suspended from his duties and Father Vaillant takes over the parish. He makes changes right away and inaugurates new religious fervor. Father Vaillant is still Vicar General to the Bishop, and on a mission for these duties he falls ill of black measles or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. After finding out Bishop Latour sets out immediately with supplies. He remonstrates himself of having brought Father Vaillant here, for he had always had a less than robust constitution. On his way he stops at Pecos pueblo, the home of Jacinto. They leave the next day and get caught in a blizzard. Jacinto finds them shelter in a ceremonial cave where they spend the night to which Bishop Latour has an immediate dislike to. Jacinto asks the bishop never to tell of this place to anyone.
Once they meet up with Father Vaillant they find him on the mend already.
Interspersed in the narrative are accounts of Indian beliefs and customs, some quite curious. Bishop Latour reflects:

At home again, in his own house, he still felt a certain curiosity about this ceremonial cave, and Jacinto’s puzzling behavior. It seemed almost to lend a color of probability to some of those unpleasant stories about the Pecos religion. He was already convinced that neither the white men nor the Mexicans in Santa Fe understood anything about Indian beliefs or the workings of the Indian mind.

Book 5 – Padre Martinez

Bishop Latour heads north to Taos to get a first-hand look at Father Martinez and the untenable situation there. Fr. Martinez is an imposing, charismatic figure, a ruler in temporal as well as spiritual affairs. He lives in open concubinage, makes his own rules and has little scruples when it comes to advancing his own power and wealth. Bishop Latour finds little to his liking, the disorder was more than his fastidious taste could bear. But it is not all one-sided, Martinez knows the country and its people and sings Mass in an impressive fashion. At the moment Bishop Latour’s hands are tied. He can’t effectively rectify the situation until he has a suitable priest to replace him.
Upon returning to Santa Fe he finds his friend Father Vaillant waiting for him and correspondence from the Vatican asking for his presence at a conference (Vatican I) the following year.

It is a year later, and Bishop Latour has returned from Europe. With him he brings five young priests, one a Spaniard whom he sends up to Taos immediately to replace Padre Martinez who agreed to resign. To no one's surprise, they don't get along, and with the Bishop’s support for the new Father Taladrid, Padre Martinez with his friend and sometimes foe Padre Lucero start their own schismatic church. Eventually the Bishop has no choice but to excommunicate the two. Padre Martinez dies never having reconciled. Padre Lucero repents on his deathbed and receives Last Rites.

The actual historical events and the relationship between Martinez and Bishop Lamy were a little more complicated as they were depicted in the novel. If anything, he was an even more colorful character in real life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio...

The insertion of Kit Carson into the novel is purely fictional.

The second major theme, and perhaps the central theme of the entire novel, is the civilizing effect that Catholicism brings to the region. We see this right in the Prologue where the reason for selecting Latour for the Bishopric is that he is a man who needs to bring “order” to a place where “savagery and ignorance” rule the day. (p. 8). As I mentioned previously, the landscape of Rome is a tamed version of the landscape we see in New Mexico. It has become tamed, symbolized by the dome of the Vatican over a land and people who were one time also savage and ignorant. Rome is a projection of what New Mexico needs to become. The dome of St. Peter’s Basilica projects the future Cathedral in Sante Fe.

And early on we get a sense of this mission from Latour and Vaillant as they administer the sacraments, evangelize the indigenous people, and shape the existing New Mexican culture. “The Church can do more than the Fort to make these poor Mexicans ‘good Americans’ Latour writes in a letter to back home to France (p. 35-36). We see Vaillant cooking refined dishes and teaching the housekeepers his recipes. Fr. Latour comments on Vaillant’s onion soup.

“Think of it, Blanchet; in all this vast country between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, there is probably not another human being who could make a soup like this.”
“Not unless he is a Frenchman,” said Father Joseph. He had tucked a napkin over the front of his cassock and was losing no time in reflection.

“I am not deprecating your individual talent, Joseph,” the Bishop continued, “but, when one thinks of it, a soup like this is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup.” (p. 38)

The priest’s mission is to bring that two thousand year tradition of Christ’s Church to a people who lack it. New Mexico, as it turns out, is the second assignment where these two priest friends have worked. Their first mission was in Ohio where at the least they planted a garden. Vaillant reflects back at that garden they had to leave for other people.

“And salad, Jean,” he continued as he began to carve. “Are we to eat dried beans and roots for the rest of our lives? Surely we must find time to make a garden. Ah, my garden at Sandusky! And you could snatch me away from it! You will admit that you never ate
better lettuces in France. And my vineyard; a natural habitat for the vine, that. I tell you, the shores of Lake Erie will be covered with vineyards one day. I envy the man who is drinking my wine. Ah well, that is a missionary’s life; to plant where another shall reap.” (p. 39)

The garden here represents control over wild nature. The missionary, then, is a person who makes a place for controlled vegetation for the refinement of life. The two priests are just small elements of a bigger picture that will span lifetimes. Latour goes on to explain what the Church is there to do. His explanation stems from learning about the visitation of Our Lady of Guadelupe and of the miracle of the mantle of her image.

“What a priceless thing for the poor converts of a savage country!” he exclaimed, wiping his glasses, which were clouded by his strong feeling. “All these poor Catholics who have been so long without instruction have at least the reassurance of that visitation. It is a household word with them that their Blessed Mother revealed Herself in their own country, to a poor convert. Doctrine is well enough for the wise, Jean; but the miracle is something we can hold in our hands and love.”

Father Vaillant began pacing restlessly up and down as he spoke, and the Bishop watched him, musing. It was just this in his friend that was dear to him. “Where there is great love there are always miracles,” he said at length. “One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.” (p. 49-50)

The beautiful image of the Blessed Mother brings a refinement to the “savage country,” Vaillant observes. And Latour responds that the miracles come not so much to heal but to make perceptions “finer,” so that they can see and hear “what is there about us always.” That to me is the central thesis of the novel, and its guiding aesthetic principle. The Church refines the culture so that the people can hear and see the divine in this amazing and savage landscape.

The novel is a sort of collage of imagery and episodes that run through time. There is no driving narrative except for the time that passes as the priests perform their functions. We see Vaillant stipulating order and cleanliness as he performs his priestly duties at the Lujon ranch.

“Take me to a place where I can wash and change my clothes, and I will be ready before you can get them here. No, I tell you, Lujon, the marriages first, the baptisms afterward; that order is but Christian. I will baptize the children tomorrow morning, and their parent will at least have been married over night.” (p.55)

We see Latour bring in the Sister of Loretto from France to set up a school in his diocese. We see devout Madame Olivares sing and play the harp. We see Fr. Vaillant riding thirty miles a day to the Hopi Indians, “marrying, baptizing, confessing as he went, making camp in the sand-hills at night” (p. 202). We learn that Vaillant likes to leave “some little token” in every house he visits, “a rosary or a religious picture,” going away “feeling that I have conferred immeasurable happiness, and have released faithful souls that were shut away from God by neglect” (p. 206). That is the refinement, the civilizing process, that the Church brings in the novel.

And of course there is the Cathedral, but let us hold off the discussion of its construction for another place.

So we see the Church’s mission of civilizing and we see the process, but we also get a glimpse of the fruits of that labor. One occasion comes early on in the novel. Latour is lost in the desert and suffering of thirst. Suddenly his mare senses water nearby and leads him to it.

Running water, clover fields, cottonwoods, acacias, little adobe houses with brilhant gardens, a boy driving a flock of white goats toward the stream,—that was what the young Bishop saw. A few moments later, when he was struggling with his horses, trying to keep them from overdrinking, a young girl with a black shawl over her head came running toward him. He thought he had never seen a kindlier face. Her greeting was tha of a Christian.

“Ave Maria Purissima, Senor. Whence do you come?”

“Blessed child,” he replied in Spanish, “I am a priest who has lost his way. I am famished for water.”

“A priest?” she cried, “that is not possible! Yet 1 look at you, and it is true. Such a thing has never happened to us before; it must be in answer to my father’s prayers. Run, Pedro, and tell father and Salvatore. (p. 24)

The shepherd boy, the little stream, the kind and innocent young girl, the little hamlet who are filled with simple and devout Catholics, what Fr. Latour finds is an isolated community that is living the faith, beautiful in their kindness, a little garden of paradise in the midst of a savage country. He finds a microcosm of what he hopes to transform all of New Mexico. In this instance, Latour is reaping the benefits of someone else’s plantings. But creating this Edenic community across his diocese is his mission and at the center of the novel.