Moradas - Sentinels of Faith in a Distant Land
An 18th-century Morada in Abiquiu. Steve Bundy, abqArts 2010 Photo Contest Winner.
In remote New Mexico, the faith of our fathers was preserved in two ways: through the local mission church (in the pueblos and cities) and a unique phenomenon known as the morada (in the outlying villages and back country). By definition, a morada is not a church, not a chapel, not an oratory. Rather, it is a private residence where the penitentes gathered to perform their spiritual duties when Catholic priests and sacraments were not readily available. Los hermanos penitentes were members of the ancient pious confraternities transplanted from Spain during the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Conquista.
The Most Holy Rosary and other devotions were practiced in the morada, either in front of the traditional home altar, or, if a non-residence, on benches facing each other as in a monastic chapter house. An hermano mayor organized the faithful to receive visiting priests. He might also prepare the home altar for the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The hermano major also organized pilgrimages to nearby sanctuarios for Holy Week and important feasts.
The Most Holy Rosary and other devotions were practiced in the morada, either in front of the traditional home altar, or, if a non-residence, on benches facing each other as in a monastic chapter house. An hermano mayor organized the faithful to receive visiting priests. He might also prepare the home altar for the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The hermano major also organized pilgrimages to nearby sanctuarios for Holy Week and important feasts.
La Morada de Santa Gertrudis La Magna
Your Right to Practice the Faith of Your Fathers
Catholics should never be reduced to joining schismatic or fake traditionalist groups just to receive valid sacraments which, because administered outside of the Church, are not conducive to salvation anyway (Council of Florence). You have the option of receiving valid sacraments within the Church while remaining a Catholic at the same time.
Our episcopally approved, traditional Catholic Mass is celebrated in the ancient and venerable Latin rite whose prayers have remained unchanged since the days when our forebears, the valiant Conquistadores, along with their Franciscan friars and Indian converts, first carried the light of la Santa Fe, our Holy Faith, into Nueva México.
The pueblo Indians knew only one rite of worship. They and their Franciscan collaborators would all recognize our Tridentine Latin Mass as nothing other than their own. This is the same Mass for which the magnificent church of San Esteban was lovingly constructed at Acoma pueblo.
The unity of the True Church is also defined as unity through time.
As a Catholic you have a right to sound doctrine and pure worship, a right that no one, not even a bishop or a pope, can take away. As a native New Mexican or visitor to the Southwest, you also know that without Divine and Catholic Faith, our culture is reduced to a meaningless commodity bought and sold by New Age throwbacks at what used to be the "Spanish" Market in Santa Fe.
Our episcopally approved, traditional Catholic Mass is celebrated in the ancient and venerable Latin rite whose prayers have remained unchanged since the days when our forebears, the valiant Conquistadores, along with their Franciscan friars and Indian converts, first carried the light of la Santa Fe, our Holy Faith, into Nueva México.
The pueblo Indians knew only one rite of worship. They and their Franciscan collaborators would all recognize our Tridentine Latin Mass as nothing other than their own. This is the same Mass for which the magnificent church of San Esteban was lovingly constructed at Acoma pueblo.
The unity of the True Church is also defined as unity through time.
As a Catholic you have a right to sound doctrine and pure worship, a right that no one, not even a bishop or a pope, can take away. As a native New Mexican or visitor to the Southwest, you also know that without Divine and Catholic Faith, our culture is reduced to a meaningless commodity bought and sold by New Age throwbacks at what used to be the "Spanish" Market in Santa Fe.
