Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

When the Spanish entered New Mexico the Franciscans tried to stop dancing at the Pueblos. This was one cause of the Pueblo revolt in 1680. After the Spanish returned, the Franciscans adopted a live and let live attitude toward the dances.  The Indians accepted Catholicism as their Religión and regarded the other rites as their [...]

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I just finished reading David Stuart’s book Anasazi America. The societies at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde were stratified and polarized between the elites of the Great Houses who lived well and had low infant mortality and the small farmers who suffered hunger and had high infant mortality.
These stratified societies ended, possibly in violence, and [...]

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The hiatus in my blogging was the result of my trip to Utah and New Mexico.
I camped in Chaco Canyon, which is still isolated (30 miles down a corrugated dirt road and across several washes). The ruins are still impressive, and arouse in everyone the questions — why here? And why did everyone leave?

Reconstruction [...]

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Willa Cather traduces Father Antonio José Martínez, the pastor of Taos, New Mexico, in her novel Death Comes to the Archbishop. It is only a novel, but is enough of a roman à clef that his memory has suffered. Lamy’s biographer, Paul Horgan (Lamy of Santa Fe), is fairer to Martínez, but glosses over many [...]

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I have been reading Death Comes to the Archbishop. It is balm for the soul after the other stuff I have been reading: the endless tales of clerical crimes, and the horrors visited by the anticlerical Republicans upon the often innocent priests of Spain. Willa Cather traduces Father Martinez, and is somewhat condescending to the [...]

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Deleted until I learn more about them. I had no idea they were so controversial. 

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 

 

 

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The two-week hiatus in posting blogs and comments was caused by my trip to the Southwest. While there I found a Navajo guide who took me into Canyon de Chelly.
First of all, never tell a Navajo guide you are up to a challenging hike. The only time I have ever come close to puking [...]

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Arturo Vasquez over at the ever-fascinating Reditus spends a great deal of time, perhaps a little too much, in the curious corners of Catholicism, or perhaps semi-Catholicism: the bandit saints, popularly-canonized dogs, curanderos, Hermeticism, etc. I love it. He posited one explanation for his identity: 

3. Arturo Vasquez is a witch: We are surprised that people [...]

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I am happy to report that Father Fessio acted on my advice and has republished Daypring, a novel by Harry Sylvester about the encounter of a secular Easterner with the Penitentes of New Mexico. 
In December 2007 I commented on the original edition. 
Every time I visit the Southwest something extraordinary happens – I try not to [...]

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In case you missed what I was getting at in the Hopi post, over at the ever-fascinating Reditus: A Chronicle of Aesthetic Christianity, our blogger Arturo notes:
I’m so Catholic …I pray to saints even the Pope doesn’t recognize. When we went to the cemetery as children, we used to visit the graves of [...]

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A Kachina

Maidie and I went on a Kachina tour of Arizona, under the aegis of Crow Canyon and under the leadership of the archeologist Chuck Adams (above), who has worked on the Hopi mesas for thirty years. We started off in Phoenix at the Heard Museum, and then went up to Flagstaff, to the Museum [...]

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When we Anglos see the dances of the Pueblos, we do not understand the songs. For the dancers, the song is primary. The dance is not a raw expression of emotion or instinct, but a rational action, one fully formed by intelligence and reason. The words of the song are therefore primary; the [...]

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Like many of those who have fallen under the spell of the Southwest, I have become fascinated by kachinas. In June (deo volente) we are going on a Kachina tour of the Hopi villages sponsored by the Crow Canyon Archeological center. It may depending, on the auspices, include a kachina dance.

The kachinas are [...]

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Phil Jenkins in First Things had an article on the forgotten Catholic novelist Harry Sylvester. I found Sylvester’s novel Dayspring. It is remarkable, and I am trying to see if it can be republished.

Sylvester wrote two political novels, Dearly Beloved and Moon Gaffney.  As Jenkins wrote,
Both these novels reflect Sylvester’s immersion in the political causes [...]

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Violence among Christians or among supposedly civilized states makes some wonder what the Prince of Peace is up to. How can the mass slaughters of the twentieth century, or of more Christian eras such as the Thirty Years War be reconciled with the peace that Christ brings? 
Information overload is part of the problem. Since 1945, [...]

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