A righteous mission for your tax dollars

AGE AND EARTHQUAKES have damaged California’s historic Mission San Miguel, but it might take the politically clueless to destroy it. They’re the ones who’ve allowed this 18th century treasure to be held hostage in the 21st century American culture wars, while the fault beneath the Temblor Mountains keeps slipping.

The compound’s adobe sanctuary -- its interior graced with original friezes painted by Salinan Indian neophytes -- cried out for mission preservation even before the magnitude 6.5 quake struck near Paso Robles on Dec. 22, 2003. Statues tumbled, plaster crumbled and wall fissures widened. Ever since, the dwindling congregation has worshiped in borrowed quarters or outdoors.

The cost of fully restoring and seismically retrofitting Mission San Miguel is estimated at about $25 million. The Diocese of Monterey says it expects to raise a substantial amount privately. It has filed a $15-million insurance claim, but the final settlement is subject to legal wrangling.

Twenty months after the quake, support for saving the mission is broad and deep. Yet there it sits, under threat that another quake will turn it into rubble. In Washington, backers include California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and the Bush administration. The California Missions Preservation Act of 2004 earmarked $10 million in matching funds for the California Missions Foundation, a secular nonprofit agency. But that money is jeopardized by a lawsuit filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The suit contends that federal money should not be spent for religious purposes. The group opposes use of public money for places of worship with active congregations.

This argument ignores a fundamental point: History bestows on some places of worship a cultural value that can be judged in secular terms. That is the rationale under which Save America’s Treasures, a public-private partnership created during the Clinton administration, made grants to Boston’s Old North Church, San Antonio’s Mission Concepcion, Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I. Americans United for Separation of Church and State protested those grants but did not file suit.

California voters approved a $128-million bond measure in 2002 to preserve elements of the state’s historic and cultural legacy. But when Mission San Miguel asked for a share of the money from the body that administers it -- the Cultural and Historical Endowment -- the organization deferred, asking state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer for an opinion about whether the state Constitution allows public money to go for such purposes. That request came 11 months ago. Lockyer’s press office said only “it’s a complex request” when asked why no opinion has been issued.

The legislation creating the endowment board is clear: “California’s historic missions are among California’s most evocative historical structures. Their protection and restoration should continue to have high priority.” Knox Mellon, executive director of the California Missions Foundation, suggests that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger might want to take charge. (Note to governor: What a photo op! You as Samson, holding up the temple walls! Certainly beats a made-to-order pothole.)

When President Bush and Sen. Boxer see eye to eye, it’s obvious that many people who might turn purple with anger over, say, whether intelligent design is science can find common ground in honoring historic sites that just happen to also be places of worship. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has no problem with the use of tax revenue to repair structures that once were houses of worship but exist now only as museums. But that line of reasoning fails to recognize that California’s most vulnerable missions are more historic, not less so, because they still have genuine priests who lead actual Mass and hear authentic confessions.

Shirley Macagni understands that -- and she is no fan of the Franciscans who built the 21 missions along El Camino Real. Macagni is a 72-year-old elder of the Salinan Indian people who were, she says, “enslaved” by the padres and Spanish soldiers at Mission San Miguel and nearby Mission San Antonio. Just the same, Macagni appreciates the birth and baptismal records the padres kept. As surely as the pharaoh’s slaves built the pyramids, the Salinans built Mission San Miguel.

A sanctuary in ruins, she says, would shame us all. “This is our history too,” she says. “It’s all of ours.”