R-And devoted my time to it. I was much sure of it andH-Did the project-did they inner city agency orR-Apostolate.
H-Apostolate, was it eventually get closed down?
R-Yes, it was closed down but Wright Radel and Betty White, well Betty Radel, who had gotten
married there, Flores married them at Santa Cruz, Bishop Flores the auxiliary there, they stayed
there and picked up the pieces.
H-Uh huh.
R-And instead of that being an Inner City Apostolate, it became Inner City Development.
H-I see.
R-And they began to get funding by agencies you know because they were doing the work there.
They moved to-they lived in the area, they raised their kids in the area.
H-Uh huh.
R-And so they just changed their name and it continued.
H-And so they, in a sense, Guadalupe, the parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe, was not longer the
titular sponsor of theR-It was never.
H-Right.
R-Guadalupe was never the sponsor of the Inner City is was the chancellery office.
H-The office of the chancellery.
R-Yeah. Uh the Guadalupe-I was working under, within the parishH-Yeah at GuadalupeR-Yeah.
H-Technically youR-Technically it wasH-Canonically, you could say.
R-Yeah, yeah. I don’t think anymore it matters toH-Yeah.
R-but uh at that time you had to you know, you had to preserve that line of authority otherwise
what happens to the archbishop?
H-Uh huh.
R-You know? Uh, if you break the line of authority, haha.
H-Did you-you know Lucey is remembered for his early work you know with Hispanics at the
national level and so on. Did Fury have a different view of the role of the church? Or was it
carried out differently?
R-Mira, when the Archbishop Lucey, when he was here he had his own image of the Mexicans
in San Antonio. And I will tell you, as far as I’m concerned, he had an imagined image of the
Mexican Americans. He didn’t know them.
H-Uh huh.
R-He knew of them, perhaps indirectly, through the reports he got. And he became a good
advocate, given those reports. And he spoke about the Mexican American-he used to come to the
seminary and describe to the seminarians the Mexicans in San Antonio, you know, making
tortillas in the Mercado you know and tamales.
H-Uh huh.
R-That wasn’t the forties you know? That was in the sixties now, but he was way back there, you
know.
H-Uh huh.
R-He was not presenting a pictureH-Uh huh.
R-of the current Mexican American in San Antonio and he did-in his own way he cared for the
Mexican American and the Mexican people, but he didn’t know them, I don’t think, he was
afraid of them. I heard, and I think that the rumors were correct, he wanted to change St. Mary’s
downtown to become the co-cathedral, you know? The saying was San Ferrnando became too
Mexican.
H-Hmm.
R-Well it was always Mexican you know? He wanted to have a more Anglo church. How true
this is I don’t know but I got it from a very good-that was the talk of the time.
H-Uh huh.
R-And the Mexicano raised so much HellH-Uh huh.
R-he backed out. Now Fury came to the archdiocese after a horrible crisis,when fifty one priests
signed a letter to Rome asking that Fury-that Lucy be removed. I was one of the signers. Thewhen we sent the letter to Rome, Rome sent a copy of the letter to the Archbishop. When you
know everything, every time we wrote to Rome, we copied the Archbishop. He knew everything
that was happening because we copied him, you know? Besides there were other ways of his
knowing what was happening because, you know, he had a tremendous CIA agency in his
business there.
H-Haha.
R-But uh the-we told Rome we want an answer, a good answer, and we gave them thirty days, ‘if
you don’t, we go public.’ We never got an answer so we went public, downtown. And it was-you
may recall the newspapers, you may recall the-I don’t ever again forever want to be a part of
anything like this. It was very painful, I think we should have talked more you know? We should
talk, talk, talk before going-because a lot of-it divided the diocese, a lot of people go hurt they
began to wonder what was happening. At the same time you have…-at the same time it was
probably a necessary evilH-Uh huh.
R-if I can call it evil. Maybe it was-I’m sorry; I know this is very negative. Maybe that’s what
had to be done in order to tell those in power Ya, basta! And that’s Peña’s favorite phrase,
Robert Peña, enough is enough you know? So umH-So how did you see Fury as rebuilding the morale after this crisis? Or did he?
R-I think Fury came in uh just-I don’t think he made any reference to what happenedH-Uh huh.
R-except saying, ‘I’m not gonna do things the way this guy did them.’ He would associate more.
He would come to a gathering of a priest, for example, take of his coat, you know, and his
sleeves you know, and ‘ah man this guy, you know, he’s human you know?’ We weren’t asking
for that much. We were asking for the archbishop not like a bunch of kids, like a bunch of serfsH-Uh huh.
R-but as men, ordained in the priesthood and to be respected.
H-Uh huh.
R-That’s all. And I think to a large extent, in not in most cases, Fury did that. I think that I
cannot count my case as an ordinary case.
H-Uh huh.
R-Uh looking back, I was a very-the work I was doing was very unique work and-not just in the
inner city but also in the formation of PADRES. Not only he, but also in Washington the USCC
got kind of uptight, ‘what is this PADRES?’ I have correspondence that I can show you where
the apostolic delegate asks Fury, ‘What is this PADRES thing?’ You know? And I have the
answer that Fury wrote, ‘Ah, it’s that Ralph Ruiz and that Henry Casso, they’re of minimal
intelligence.’
Both Laugh
R-‘Don’t know nothing.’ But we proved them wrong you know?
H-Do you think he said that to keep the Roman agencies out of his diocese?
R-Well, I think that when the apostolic delegate asks you a question it should be taken as
seriously as when the archbishop asks me a question.
H-Yeah.
R-And it should be-I never-I don’t think they play games at that level.
H-Yeah.
R-I don’t think.
H-But they say one of the things that you pointed out was that Lucey had this imagined you
know concept of who the Mexican or Mexican American community was or what it was. And
one of the reasons I’ve heard is that, you sort of mentioned, is that he rarely you know went out
of the bishop’s house you know. He went to confirmation and went back home and never really
went into people’s house and into the um, into the parish hall, and obviously he only came once
into the inner city. Did Fury? Was he more outreaching in that respect not only to the priests but
also to the faithful?
R-You know Fury never came to the inner city. I think from the very beginning he didn’t agree
with the idea-with the concept of it.
H-Uh huh.
R-I think-what how-what was his behavior in other areas, I don’t know.
H-Uh huh.
R-All I can tell you is that my encounter with him, there were more than I wish there would be
and the manner in which we encounter them-what I said was a feeling, his feelings about the
inner city. I think that the formation of PADRES was an extra pain. He was appointed by the
bishops to be the head of the committee responding to the…for example. I had-we had requested
fifty thousand dollars for PADRES from the USCC, the US Catholic Conference, and Bishop
Bernadine, who was in the secretary general, who later cardinal archbishop of Chicago, said that
I was going to get them. Also we need to have representation in the church. We’d not only-we
were not only pushing for the Catholic church to appoint Mexican American bishops, we wanted
more representation in the high levels of the church governmentH-Uh huh.
R-with Mexican Americans. And I had my field-my national field director was Joe Lopez, a
priest from the diocese of Kansas City, Missouri, uh Kansas City. And he went around touching
bases with the priests and all, we got him a car. And when I requested if there was an opening for
the Campaign of Human Development, a new department-in fact, Bishop Flores and I were thewere in the first group of that board. They uh-the director was a guy by the name of, well, I
won’t mention his name but he said that he was going to appoint a Mexican American. And then
later on we kept going back and forth, and said, ‘Well, we want Joe Lopez.’ I talked to Joe and
he said, ‘I’ll take it.’ I said, ‘You can have Joe.’ All we wanted was to have representation. I can
get into a field director later on. Well, then one day a black priest that worked in the UFCC, a
good friend of mine, he calls me and we were just talking and I said, ‘Yeah we hope to have’
because he was always kidding you know, ‘We’re two percent of the Catholic population’ he
says. ‘We’re two percent blacks, two percent. And I’m sitting here ‘You guys are twenty five
percent, and not one of you guys are here.’ I said, ‘Listen guy we’re gonna have one.’ ‘Where?’
‘In the campaign on the Swinney.’ He says, ‘nah they already hired the guy.’ I said, ‘don’t joke.’
He said, ‘I’m not joking.’ So I inquired further and it was true. Here was Joe waiting to get the
job and me too. So I sat down and wrote this guy a letter and I, it was a mean letter. I called him
everything in the book, he was-he liked to drink and I called him a drunkard and that he could
keep his word. And I copied Bernadine, who had been my friend. You know I had gone to his
house where they stay up there in Washington and, you know, supported to a large extant
PADRES I thought. Well I got a letter from him because he got a copy of the one I sent to
Swinney. ‘Unless you retract what you said, blah blah blah blah, we will find it difficult to turn
loose the money, the fifty thousand dollars for PADRES’, haha you know. And I said, ‘You
know, once again we are being bought by money. We could not-they can do whatever they want
but we can’t. I’m only a cut of the board but there’s not enough to be threatened by money’, you
know? If I’m gonna give him for money then I’m going to go hang my gloves. So I wrote back, I
said, ‘Dear Joe, if I don’t get the money within three weeks I will make preparations for the
following: we’ll meet in Kansas City, Missouri from all over the country, go on a caravan to
D.C. and tell the whole world the way the Catholic Church treats the Mexican American not now
but forever. And when we begin to say something you threaten us in the manner you did.’
Something like that, I think I got a copy of the letter. You know, how else am I gonna-see Joe
lived in Washington. There was a ‘burn baby burn’ syndrome out there every night. You see the
sirens you because someone.. burning here they were burning there. So then he probably
believed that I was gonna get somebody and…Kansas City.
Both Laugh
R-In case ofH-Laughs
R-How could I do that, you know?
H-Yeah.
R-But I could not give in either because I would have been lynched by the board of PADRES
you know?
H-Yeah.
R-Hey it was not my money it’s not my-you know how could I be responsible? I said, ‘I’m
gonna do this and if it doesn’t work then I resign, but I’m not going to retract’, that’s what I
thought. Anyway at that time there was a Lutheran pastor working with PADRES. I had
requested and got him from the Lutheran bishop to have him become an ecumenical effort in
PADRES. And Joe Lopez, the national field director, they were gonna go to the California to
meet with Dolores Hope, Bob Hope’s wife was Catholic, and she was gonna help us get some
money. So I called him at home, I said, ‘listen cancel the trip to California, see me tomorrow
morning at my office.’ So they came to the office. They were complaining because they were
half way to California, you can go some other time. So I gave Joe the letter to read and I asked
him what it was, the content. He says, ‘I’m not going to go to Bernadine and show her that.’ I
said, ‘Joe, you go out there or you go back to Kansas City guy because you know.’ He asked me
to and I told Jack O’Donnell, the Lutheran pastor, ‘you go with Joe. Where ever he goes you go.
If he goes sees Bernadine, Joe, he goes with you and you stick with Joe.’ So they left, three days
passed, and we didn’t hear from the guys. Then this black priest calls me, ‘Ralph, what the hell
happened?’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘You guys who look-who wanted to see
Bernadine and they left, and then they had to take Bernadine’ I don’t know to the hospital or
somewhere. I told him, ‘Don’t blame my guys.’
H-Laughs
R-Something like that. I was just-I was presenting more, I was very-those guys called one night,
Joe called. He said, ‘we saw Bernadine’. Yeah, ‘Joe, how come you haven’t called me?’ ‘Well
we were on our way down.’ ‘Well, see me tomorrow morning.’ It was late at night so they both
came to see me the following morning. And Jack would tell me, ‘Joe didn’t want to go. Joe
didn’t want to go and I had to force him you know. Then we’d just roam around Washington all
over the place looking at monuments’, haha.
H-Laughs.
R-‘And they we finally went, and we went he didn’t want to take me in, he told me to stay
outside. I said ‘no I’m going in,’ so I went in to see Bernadine.’ Anyway I got a letter from
Bernadine saying something to the affect, ‘You know when we speak-we tend to speak out of
line when we’ve-are angry and excited.’ It says, ‘You will get your money, just write a lettermake a proposal on how much is going to be used and take it to the chairman of the
subcommittee, Archbishop Fury’, haha. So I sat down and I wrote the key proposal and I gave it
to Father Justus who was also-he was from Brownsville, the Brownsville diocese working with
us in the inner city. I gave it to this guy and said, ‘Take it to the archbishop.’ And he took-he just
knocked on the door, gave it to the archbishop and we got our money. So those are some of theH-Yeah.
R-Little tidbits you know.
H-We’re going to have to come back and talk about PADRES some more, hopefully in another
meeting. Let me ask you something about you know you spoke briefly about the seminary and as
a good experience generally, as a happy experience, some of it because of your own character
you attributed. But some of the Mexican American priests have mentioned a bit of discomfort in
moving from that-in moving from that Mexican world or Mexican American world into that
Anglo world of the seminary. You-for you it did not, it seemed to have been an easy transition?
R-No. No um, especially not in San Antonio. I didn’t sense too much discrimination in Chicago
with the Franciscans. We were all young kids, maybe, probably. When I left the Franciscans, the
seminary, and reentered the seminary at Assumption, it was a vast difference. Right away you
know you sense that kind of, you know, discrimination, you’re less than others, etc etc. The-there
was-it wasn’t even something that was subliminally there. It was sometimes very obviousH-Uh huh.
R-especially, not among all of them, but among a number of them.
H-Uh huh.
R-Um, perhaps I experienced that because of my character. I had a short wick and I wouldn’t
take too much stuff from anybody, only if I had to. But, you know, you can take the farmer out
of the farm but not the farm out of the farmer. I’m a Westsider, I don’t care where I am, even if I
go to Heaven, I will be who I am, a Westsider. And we were taught that if you strike first you
overcome the opposition by fifty percent you know? So I applied that Law in the minor seminary
and it worked and um in the major seminary we’re older then-but I came close to it because I
wouldn’t take too much stuff from these guys.
H-What would be an example of that?
R-‘Hey greaser’, you know?
H-Uh huh.
R-Uh, I was the dean of my classH-Uh huh.
R-and there were a number of guys in my class that resented that. I made the schedules for this
and that and you know had it been somebody else they wouldn’t have minded.
H-Uh huh.
R-No after eight years you get to know where the rubber hits the road although as you live
together, you know, for a year after a while you know just begin to blend, blend, blend, you
begin to mature. I’ll give you an example, there were guys in my glass, smart guys, who kept
flunking Spanish, they would not take Spanish, you know? I went to see them afterwards as
priests. They had been assigned to Mexican parishes, they’re from west Texas. They spoke that
Spanish like native wetbacks.
H-Laughs
R-In fact one had fallen in love with a Mexican girlH-Uh huh.
R-and wanted to marry her. And he was asking me, an experienced person in the field, haha,
what he should do and I said, ‘Listen, it’s a decision you have to make on your own. All I can
think is what ever you’re going to do, make a decision one way or another, don’t play both
games at the same time.’
H-Uh huh.
R-But the point is that you know, once you deal with the people, with the Mexican people,
instead of harboring childhood, racist tendencies towards a person or people, once you get to
know those people you cannot help but fall in love with them you know, with the families,
because I mean what you got is a beautiful people, you know? They’re hardworking, their true
lovers, true givers, they’re generous, they’re docile.
H-Uh huh.
R-Today we went to pick up my sister in lawH-Uh huh.
R-from the airport with another friend she brought with her. And there were a number of
Mexican families talking you know and we’re coming from the street. ‘Oh excuse me oh’, you
know… just being friendly to these two strange girls you know?
H-Uh huh.
R-They went to pay you know and they said, ‘All I got is one dollar’, I said, ‘well I got’-I gave
them a ten dollar bill. He says, ‘Thank you for the tip.’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, let me have the
ten dollar,’ you know, and he gives it back to me and he says, ‘Thank you for the dollar’, haha.
H-Laughs
R-He says ‘oh…and takes off you know. And this girl said, ‘oh man they’re so friendly here’,
you know? ‘You just talk to each other’; they’re from St. Louis.
H-Yeah.
R-So that’s the character see?
H-So the farm boys that you sort of alluded to, hahaR-Pardon me?
H-The ones who may have been prejudice, you know, lost that once theyR-Once they saw the reality.
H-Uh huh.
R-You know? Once they saw for themselves and dealt with the people they thought were not
worthy of their attention.
H-Uh huh.
R-That they were beautiful people.
H-Did they bring in speakers in the seminary about working with the Mexican Americans?
R-Not that I know of, not in my time. Now, it’s different.
H-Uh huh.
R-We have the Mexican American Cultural Center, who by the way was a concept of PADRES.
H-Uh huh.
R-OK. It was, we got together and we talked about it and, they had Assumption seminary.
H-But at that timeR-At that timeH-they-there wasn’tR-Not that I know of, I don’t think.
H-some ministry things andR-No, they taught Spanish.
H-Uh huh.
R-At that time, you don’t leave the seminary until you got ordained.
H-Uh huh.
R-You left to become ordained. Now when I became a deacon, they had started to allow deacons
to work during the summer, to work during the summer assigned to a parish with a pastorH-Uh huh.
R-to get some expertise, some training you know?
H-But that didn’t happen?
R-But that didn’t-it happened towards the end. It happened to me and the class ahead of me, but
before that they weren’t doing that at all.
H-Our tape is running outR-That’s right.
H-and we’re going to have to come back and talk a little bit more about PADRES at your
convenience of course.
R-OK listen, is it off?