SHEPHERD TEND TO YOUR FLOCK, HANDS OFF TSC TRUSTEES

By Juan Montoya

During the years preceding the Mexican Revolution, the Catholic clergy earned the enmity of the Mexican people after they discovered that priests were using the confessional as a tool to gather intelligence on the revolutionarios and giving the information to the military and the hacendados.

Paramilitary groups would swoop down on the villages at night and seize the unsuspecting peasants. Their corpses would be found later in the sierra or strung up in a nearby tree.

It is a suspicion that still lives on.

That reputation, of the church aiding and abetting the elite classes at the expense of the masses, comes to mind as we view the activities of the clergy surrounding the current debate on whether the trustees of the board of the Texas Southmost College should heed the demands by the University of Texas System to allow it to take the district lock, stock, and barrel and accept its dissolution.

One priest as far back as November 2010 was already chastising district voters for electing trustees who did not vote to allow the UT System to take it all and accept an "advisory" role as a junior partner.

Armand Mathew, who at $52,000 per year was paid by the UTB to run the Center for Civic Engagement, wrote the Brownsville Herald telling voters that if they did not elect the "right" people as trustees, bad things would happen

Most people who read the letter probably couldn't tell it was a priest because Mathew didn't use his clerical title.

We can but speculate on the motives behind the priest's letter of reproach against the people's choices. But whatever they may have been, Mathew should have been aware that it was not his place to intrude into the democratic process and counsel the electorate on its choice of political representation.

How does the rejection of the UT System's partnership agreement and the system's subsequent announcement that it was not going to give the TSC trustees time to put together an alternate suddenly become a matter for the church and/or its representatives to publicly comment on the caliber of the representatives we elect to these board?

Matthew would do well to heed some advise himself: You were paid to encourage and teach kids to vote, not to tell them whom to vote for.

But if that wasn't bad enough, it only got worse.

On Feb. 24, this man of god wrote Trey Mendez, one of four trustees who refused to relinquish 75 years of the blood, sweat, and tears of local resident who have supported the college, warning him that he would move heaven and earth to make sure he would be finished as a lawyer if he didn't change his vote.

"The straightforward statement: If you do not rescind your vote, I will spend every last ounce of my energy organizing this community against you and your career as a lawyer in Brownsville. This is not a threat, Trey. It is simply an honest statement of what I intend to do," Mathew wrote.

He followed up his threat leading a march in protest against the majority of the trustees and led the protesters to the doors of Mendez's law office on Elizabeth St. A Facebook posting informs us that the protest outside Trey's door disrupted business there and that clients were scared away from their appointments.

Now we understand that Valley Interfaith is now getting involved in trying to undermine the decision by the trustees and has sent emissaries from among its members to the Texas Legislature to speak against their decision.

What gives with the Catholic Church? Is this a premeditated policy coming from the Bishop's office? Or is it the act of a lone madman, Mathew, wagging the dog?

Whatever it is, the church can hardly afford to take on this issue when it's dealing with crises in its own home.

We have just seen the suicide of a priest found hanging behind the rectory at St. Mary's Church.

Suicide, as we were brought up to believe, is the most hideous and cowardly of sins, and did not warrant the mercy of the Lord. That he was found next to the rectory where Bishop Patrick Fitzgerald passed away, and where the nuns lived is bad enough.

But can you imagine what the students and their parents must be thinking just about now? Why did he do it? Was there some dark story such as pedophilia involved? Did he steal something and got caught? Did he not keep his vows of chastity?

The new bishop must think he inherited a whirlwind. Now he has this rouge priest trying to intimidate elected officials on the front pages of the local daily, a sort of political suicide, if you will.

And why does Valley Interfaith – a predominantly catholic group – have to get involved in trying to overturn the decision of the college's elected officials?

At one time, to live in South Texas meant to be a Democrat until the actions of that party resulted in massive defections to the Republicans. Today we have a Republican County Judge and a Republican U.S. Representative.

Is it time to start reassessing our spiritual loyalties as well?