Hispanic Catholicism in Transitional California: The Life of Jose Gonzalez Rubio, O.F.M., 1804-1875 (review)

Hispanic Catholicism in Transitional California: The Life of José González Rubio, O. F. M., 1804-1875. By MICHAEL CHARLES NERI. Monograph Series, vol. 14. Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1995. Illustration. Notes. Glossary. Index. Bibliography. xii, 175 pp. Cloth, $30.00.

Since its establishment nearly six decades ago, the Academy of American Franciscan History (AAFH) has published more than 40 volumes on the history of the Franciscans in the Americas. Among the most important of these publications are the writings and biographies of Junípero Serra and Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, the missionaries who brought Catholicism to colonial California. As the principal architects of the chain of Franciscan missions that eventually stretched from San Diego to Sonoma, Serra and Lasuén have been memorialized in scores of books and articles. Less well known, however, are the men who worked to preserve the Franciscan legacy in California at the end of the colonial period, after Mexican independence, and during mission secularization and the ascendance of Anglo-American rule. Thus, the AAFH's publication of Michael Charles Neri's Hispanic Catholicism in Transitional California is a useful addition to the history of Catholicism in California and the American West. It joins other important studies, such as Michael E. Engh's Frontier Faiths: Church, Temple, and Synagogue in Los Angeles, 1846-1888 (1999) and Leonard Pitt's The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890 (1966), both of which explore the difficulties that confronted the Franciscan leaders of the Catholic Church in Alta California after the American conquest.

Neri chronicles the life of José González Rubio from his birth in Guadalajara, through his assumption of the leadership of the Zacatecan missions in California, to his death in Santa Barbara. Separate chapters arranged chronologically focus on particular periods in González Rubio's life and his work for the Catholic Church in California. Neri's study combines an analysis of González Rubio's correspondence with the observations of previous historians. At times, however, Neri does not always make clear how the larger historical context he describes influenced González Rubio. For example, Neri provides a rich discussion of life in Guadalajara during the Mexican struggle for independence, yet he does not suggest how González Rubio's upbringing in this city shaped his life. Moreover, Neri does not make clear why González Rubio--a man of unwavering religious devotion and considerable administrative talent--set his sights on a career as a missionary in Alta California. Ultimately, the picture that emerges from this study is one of a missionary who followed the will of God rather than personal ambition, dedicated himself to the Franciscan Order, and, according to Neri, won universal admiration (p. 130).

The great strength of Neri's study, which is a revision of the author's 1974 doctoral dissertation, is its careful and cautious narration of the struggle between González Rubio and Bishop Thaddeus Amat for control over the Catholic community of Santa Barbara. This larger conflict, which consumed much of González Rubio's time and energy during the last 20 years of his life, centered on three issues: Amat's attempt to transfer the Franciscan missionaries from Santa Barbara; Amat's refusal to allow González Rubio to ordain clerics at a newly established apostolic college in Santa Barbara; and Amat's decision to withhold from the missionaries the deed acknowledging Mission Santa Barbara and its adjoining lands as church property. In a manner reminiscent of Serra's and Lasuén's earlier efforts to protect Franciscan authority in Alta California against incursions by the Spanish state, González Rubio and his fellow Franciscans, through a combination of determination, steadfastness, and administrative skill, eventually prevailed in all of these struggles.

Despite his efforts and achievements in...