Is This a Mission Impossible?

SAN MIGUEL, Calif. —  Since the San Simeon earthquake in 2003, the tottering old church at the mission in this tiny Central Coast town has been off-limits to just about everyone, including the congregation that used to worship in it.

A chain-link fence seals off the entrance. Deep cracks scar the facade. Warning signs are everywhere.

Officials fear the 6-foot-thick walls of California’s most dilapidated mission could come tumbling down with the next tremor, destroying two centuries of art, artifacts and history.

Work to restore Mission San Miguel Arcangel might already be underway, except that the architectural heirloom is at the epicenter of the long-running conflict over the separation of church and state. Even though voters passed an initiative in 2002 aimed in part at preserving the fragile missions, California officials this year ruled that the state’s Constitution bars the use of public funds for places of worship.

On Wednesday, the same day the nation’s most prominent preservation group put San Miguel on its list of most endangered historic structures, a frustrated state senator launched a drive here for a constitutional amendment to allow the state to spend money on its crumbling religious landmarks.

“Yes, this is a place of worship, but it’s also an important piece of our state’s history,” Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) said in an interview. “Landmark buildings with historical or current religious affiliation should be allowed to apply for state grants just like any other nonprofit.”

But some critics say that the government shouldn’t funnel money to churches, regardless of their historic value.

“This is a genuinely terrible idea,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, a minister in the United Church of Christ who heads Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “The taxpayers of California should not be forced to subsidize active, worshiping congregations by repairing their buildings or other structures used for religious purposes.”

Mission San Miguel was named one of America’s 11 most endangered historic places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which compiles a new list annually. Among the other designees this year were neighborhoods in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and a battered staircase from the World Trade Center.

“San Miguel is barely holding itself up,” said Knox Mellon, director of the California Missions Foundation. “Another little tremor, and it’ll go.”

Even before a magnitude 6.5 earthquake rocked the area Dec. 22, 2003, the church had fallen into such serious disrepair that building inspectors threatened to close it. Then the quake buckled walls, smashed religious statues and turned wide cracks into chasms, forcing authorities to shutter a building so old its beams had been hauled by mule from forests 40 miles away.

The mission founded in 1797 has seen hard times before. In 1806, most of it burned down. After the Mexican government sold the California missions in the 1840s, San Miguel was at times a saloon, a dance hall and a storehouse. In 1848, bandits killed its 11 residents. It was a virtual ruin before Franciscan friars took it over decades later.

Despite the mission’s many incarnations, the years have done almost nothing to alter the interior of its simple church, completed in 1821.

Grease spots mark the walls where cows and pigs rubbed against them. Carved graffiti of sailing ships are visible near the choir loft. Ornate frescoes painted about 200 years ago by Salinan Indians under the direction of a Spanish monk adorn the walls.

“It’s almost magical,” said Tina Foss, director of the museum at Mission Santa Barbara. “Only San Miguel has the original paint on its walls; there’s nowhere else that you can walk in and see original Native American work the way you can see it there.”

Only now, nobody can walk in.

Repairs to the church will cost at least $6 million, according to John Fowler, a San Luis Obispo accountant who is directing the restoration effort for a group called Friends of San Miguel. Fixing the other rundown buildings in the rambling mission complex could cost $9 million more.

“Our insurance company thinks it’s just a paint-and-plaster job, but we think it’s a lot more than that,” Fowler said. “The problem is with the structure itself.”

In March, Fowler and his group ran into a more surprising problem.

Their application for state funds was turned down by the California Cultural and Historical Endowment, an agency that distributes money from Proposition 40, a bond measure aimed in part at restoring historic sites.

While the law setting up the endowment pointed to California’s missions as possible funding recipients, the attorney general’s office disagreed, citing provisions in the state Constitution against using public funds to advance religion.

The opinion also cited previous court decisions, primarily a 1923 appellate court ruling that barred the use of public money for the restoration of Mission San Diego because it was owned by a Roman Catholic archdiocese.

The rejection angered mission advocates around the state.

“It shocked me,” said the California Missions Foundation’s Mellon, who is also a former state historic preservation official. “Once Prop. 40 passed, I assumed it was a slam-dunk that one or two missions would get funded.”

Jack Williams, an archaeologist who specializes in the Mission era, likened the rejection to “a bait-and-switch by the state.”

“The state recognizes the importance of these resources but then denies access to public funds in order to save them,” he said. “It’s not as if anyone wants to take the preservation money and use it to, say, buy incense or send missionaries to Africa.”

Still, the border separating church and state has been a blurry one.

Three of California’s 21 missions -- those at Lompoc, Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista -- are owned by the state and run as historic parks. San Juan Bautista is still a functioning church, but the state owns the plaza around it and not the church building itself.

State funding has trickled -- however rarely -- into other missions. The state chipped in $350,000 after a 1987 earthquake for work on Mission San Gabriel’s damaged museum and bell tower.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Helen Nelson, the mission’s retired restoration director. “It was very unusual.”

On the federal level, money to preserve religious properties flows far more easily.

A program called Save America’s Treasures has funded work at landmarks, including Boston’s Old North Church, where Paul Revere hung his famous lanterns, and Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., the nation’s oldest synagogue. Both still serve as houses of worship.

“We’re dealing with bricks and mortar, not religion,” said Richard Moe, co-chairman of Save America’s Treasures and president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “When you’re dealing with the physical fabric of a building, you’re not endorsing religion but supporting an historic structure for the entire community.”

In fact, Save America’s Treasures has kicked in more than $300,000 for repairs at a spot the state has declared out-of-bounds: Mission San Miguel.

Under Maldonado’s measure, any religious building listed in state or national registers of historic places could qualify for state preservation funds.

A candidate for state controller whose district includes San Miguel, Maldonado scoffs at the notion that a state grant to deteriorating missions would promote religion.

“Every fourth-grader in the state knows that it’s about our history,” said Maldonado, whose son Nicholas is among the thousands of fourth-graders building models of missions as a class project.

While the conflict over public funding mounts, the mission’s 150 parishioners celebrate Mass without a church. For two years, they met a few blocks away in a dining hall for field workers. Now they worship in a recently reopened space that had been the mission’s museum.

The Diocese of Monterey helps them apply for grants and deal with insurance problems, but says it doesn’t have the cash to help. “There’s no diocesan pot of money for this,” spokesman Kevin Drabinski said. “We wish there were.”

So parishioners hold bingo games and bake sales, golf tournaments and barbecues. The local chapter of Native Daughters of the Golden West sells enchiladas.

“We’re desperate to get back in,” said Georgia Ann Caudle, a longtime parishioner and a moving force in the Busy Bees fundraising group. “It’ll be like going home.”

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Endangered sites

In addition to Mission San Miguel Arcangel, the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed 10 other places as the most endangered. Details on the sites are available at www.nationaltrust.org.

* Arts & Industries Building: The first Smithsonian building on the Washington mall has continued to deteriorate since it was closed in 2004.

* Blair Mountain Battlefield: Coal companies plan to strip-mine the West Virginia site of a historic 1921 armed insurrection by miners.

* Doo-Wop motels: The string of kitschy 1950s motels on the shore in Wildwood, N.J., is threatened by modern resort developments.

* Fort Snelling Upper Post : The 28 brick buildings constructed between the 1870s and the early 1900s at the Minnesota fort are in disrepair.

* Mississippi coast: Landmarks in such towns as Gulfport and Pass Christian are at risk as speculators move into the hurricane- devastated region.

* New Orleans neighborhoods: Areas of the ravaged city that are not as well known as the French Quarter face uncertain futures.

* Kenilworth: In the turn-of-the-20th-century town north of Chicago, 47 historic homes have been razed as there are no preservation ordinances.

* Kootenai Lodge: A firm that bought the historic lodge and cabins on Swan Lake in Montana plans to demolish some of them to make room for condos.

* Over-the-Rhine neighborhood: The distinctive one-time German area of Cincinnati is plagued by crime and abandoned buildings.

* World Trade Center staircase: The Vesey Street staircase, the only surviving above-ground remnant, is in the way of a proposed tower.

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Source: National Trust for Historic Preservation

Los Angeles Times