Bishop Lamy, Continued... Part II

Jose Manuel Gallegos

What a mess Lamy created. A mess like you don't see every day, even in New Mexico.

Being forced by the New Mexican Catholic clergy to go to Durango to deal with the Mexican Bishop Zubiria on the Catholic leadership for New Mexico must have irked Lamy to no end. That being worked out he returned to New Mexico and started a reign of change, some described it as a reign of terror within Catholic followers who were mostly New Mexican Hispanics. The reign started with the pastoral letter mentioned in the previous post.

There was an immediate and equally as concerted reaction by the New Mexican Catholic followers. The reaction was broad and led by the New Mexican clergy who were in New Mexico when Lamy got here, all were Hispanic. Non Catholic's sat by and enjoyed the public fight.

Lamy was working with the his friend and confident, the priest and later bishop of Colorado, Joseph Machebeuf. He had no other assistance at this point.

Bishop Lamy's reaction to this push back to the changes he proposed and was in the process of implementing was 1) to threaten the individual priests with censure or outright ex communication and 2) threats to the followers who were caught up in the inter Catholic fight was that he would withhold the sacraments if they failed to pay him the tithe. The tithe, for those who may be unfamiliar with the term means the 10% of all earnings which most Christian sects, Catholics included, require of the faithful.

Letters with threats from the bishop to private individuals were delivered and responded to, especially by one Francisco Tomas Baca of Pena Blanca, New Mexico who did not take kindly to being threatened. His response to the threat was worded just as strong as the threat itself. The bishop, being unaccustomed to being "disobeyed" wrote back with further threats. And so it continued.

The priests were being censured and threatened with ex communication if they did not toe the line. They did not take the whole affair laying down either. There were letters flying from the bishop to the priests, from the priests to the bishop and from both to the Vatican in Rome no less. Pope Pius IX was a primary witness to the mess going on in New Mexico.

One of the censured priests, then a member of the US congress, Jose Manuel Gallegos got the politicians involved in the spat. It even affected the congressional race in New Mexico between Jose Manuel Gallegos and Miguel Antonio Otero. Speeches were made on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC by both of the New Mexicans pro and con as related to Bishop Lamy.

Gallegos accused Lamy of having interfered in the election on behalf of Otero and Otero claiming that Gallegos had used the pulpit  to secure his election and that Gallegos was corrupt and the reason Lamy and Gallegos did not get along.

To be continued as I read the book "Lamy of Santa Fe", A Biography by Paul Horgan and published in 1975 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux of New York.