Native American Catholics: We believe in one God

   JEMEZ PUEBLO, N.M. – The spontaneous tribute had churchgoers dabbing their eyes.
   At the end of Mass, Patrick Romero rose from his pew to perform the special dance of thanksgiving Pueblo Indians use to revere the spiritual leaders in their midst. Romero, a resident of the Jemez Pueblo of northern New Mexico, directed his movements to the three vested priests seated in the sanctuary, sweeping his arms in an arc to express his people’s gratitude to the men and praying over them in his native language of Towa.
   “We pray two ways: Catholicism and our traditional way. Today that is exactly what’s happening,” explained Romero after the Sept. 7 Mass at Jemez’s San Diego Mission Church.

A singular honor

   Romero had called on both traditions a year earlier – at the canonization Mass of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American woman from North America to attain sainthood. With the blessing of his pueblo’s spiritual leaders, Romero carried a Jemez-crafted statue of the saint to the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica.
   “I was given the honor to go to Rome – to place her in our mother church’s sacred place of preparation, (using) our way of praying,” marveled Romero, 70. “I give St. Tekakwitha the honor that I am standing here today.”
   Romero was alluding to a recent accident in which he was struck by a truck while bicycling to St. Kateri’s shrine and miraculously suffered no broken bones.
   “I can say I was brought up by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and Franciscan priests,” Romero said of his years at San Diego’s now-closed Catholic school. “Yes, I have forgotten the classroom assignments, but the spiritual morals and standards that I learned are still with me,” he said.
   Romero’s testimony speaks volumes to his Catholic Native American brothers and sisters, whose history is marred by a century of failure by Spanish colonists to recognize Pueblo Indians’ prayerful rituals as expressions of the very faith in Christ and the Holy Trinity taught to them by the Franciscan Catholic priests who came to the area in 1598.
   Out of fear and misunderstanding, wrought in part by a language barrier, Spain’s civil and religious authorities routinely suppressed and punished Native expressions of faith. The tensions came to a head during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, when residents of New Mexico’s original 46 “pueblos” – or villages – retaliated against the public hangings of three Pueblo medicine men. The Spanish and the Franciscans retreated to Texas, returning to the area 20 years later to find that many of the Pueblo had kept the fires of their Catholic faith alive. The returning settlers abandoned their efforts to purge Native expressions of faith, and the healing has continued to this day.

Weight of history still felt

   “At one point the whole community all came to church – their grandfathers, their grandmas, their parents, uncles, aunties, everyone,” said Christopher Toya, one of San Diego Church’s two sacristans. “Nowadays, people are confused. They read about church history, of what really happened to our people when the Spanish came into the Southwest. People are saying, ‘Man, they did that to our people. Why should we stick with the church?’”
   “But if you really have a true love for Jesus and his mother, you have a sense of where things fit into place,” Toya added. “To this day we still have the faith because we had people here in the pueblo that testified that we believed in Christ our Lord, and his mother Mary.”
   In the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, 90 percent of the estimated 50,000 Pueblo Indians are Catholic by baptism. There are 19 Indian pueblos in New Mexico, each a tribal nation with a sovereign government and land base, and its own secular and spiritual leaders.
   “Pueblos have been here for so long that they’ve developed a very traditional system, and that’s very important to them,” noted Deacon Joe Herrera Jr., director of Native American ministry for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. “The challenge is, how do we get the traditionalists to understand their Catholic roots, too? Because all of the what we call ‘traditionalists’ have been baptized, but some just haven’t been catechized enough to understand their faith.”
   Deacon Herrera grew up in the Cochiti Pueblo, southwest of Santa Fe, participating in both the Native traditions of his faith – through ceremonial dance and song – and the Catholic rituals of attending Mass and receiving the sacraments at his pueblo’s St. Bonaventure Church. One of four Native American deacons in his archdiocese, Deacon Herrera said Pueblo Catholics’ main concern was clear after his office surveyed them on their needs in the areas of religious education, the sacraments and pastoral guidance.
   “High on the list was, ‘We want our own people to minister to us,’” Deacon Herrera said. “That trust factor is really critical.”
   Today Herrera is assisted by two full-time Native American coordinators who work daily in the archdiocese’s 16 pueblos: one who teaches adults how to conduct youth ministry; and another who heads up a “teach-others-to-fish” model of religious education.
   The Native American ministry also sponsors a monthly radio show on issues of interest to Native American Catholics, and Santa Fe Archbishop Michael Sheehan celebrates an annual Native American Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe. Last April, ministry leaders had a table at the Gathering of Nations – the largest annual gathering of Native Americans from across the country.
   “We put a booth up and, boy, were we active!” Deacon Herrera said. “People were asking about the Catholic faith, some of who weren’t even Catholic.” He said informational booths on Catholicism at the various pueblo feast day celebrations – festivals of dance, music and food honoring the patron saint of each pueblo church – also are being planned.

Vestiges of same faith

   Even once skeptical members of Deacon Herrera’s own tribal council in Cochiti are warming up to the notion that traditional and Catholic modes of worship focus on the same God, Son and Holy Spirit. Deacon Herrera recalled his religious elders’ initial hesitancy when he asked them for their blessings to study for the Catholic diaconate.
   “They said, ‘Well, we have to think about that because it’s usually an either-or choice,’” Herrera recalled. “But now, in our traditional meetings, they talk about what the apostle John said, or what some of what Jesus’ words were – so they’re beginning to understand the links (between Native American and Catholic). The values are exactly the same, even though the rituals might be different. When they begin to see those links, they’re not so afraid of it.”

St. Kateri, pray for us

   Deacon Herrera’s outreach comes at a pivotal time in Native American Catholic history. Last October’s canonization of St. Kateri, a member of the Mohawk tribe of New York, has created a tidal wave of evangelization that is bringing hundreds of nominally Catholic pueblo residents to a richer understanding of their baptismal faith. Altars to St. Kateri are common in pueblo homes, and women’s groups at pueblo parishes are known as “Kateri Circles.” Last year, with the assistance of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, hundreds of Native American Catholics were able to journey to Rome for her canonization.
   “The canonization of St. Kateri has really opened the doors to us being (in the pueblos),” said Maria Cruz Cordoba, director of religious education for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. “There’s a lot of healing with the canonization, and the bridges are being built for us to really go and make a difference and help the catechists with things that they’ve been struggling with, and that is living the Catholic faith as well as their Native traditions.”

A ‘new energy’ in the air

   The fusion of faith traditions is being vigorously promoted by Archbishop Sheehan, who never misses an opportunity to say to the 310,000 Catholics in his flock that “there is no contradiction between being a faithful Catholic and a good Indian.”
   “We are experiencing a new energy in the Native American ministry right now in this archdiocese,” Archbishop Sheehan said, referring to the large number of adults coming into the sacraments over the last few years. “This archdiocese is not a melting pot, where everybody gets put together and we have this big stew. What we are is a mosaic. Each of our Native American communities, our Hispanic communities, the Anglos, the African Americans, people of Asian background – each group shines, each group has its individuality, and we celebrate that individuality in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe!”
            Beth Donze can be reached at [email protected].