In the News ... "Stanton boasts historic monastery"

OA Photo by Jacob Ford

• Foundation has spent $1.25 million on restoration

By Bob Campbell, Reporter
• Odessa American

STANTON, TEXAS - The story of St. Joseph’s Carmelite Monastery here at 200 Carpenter St. is a classic tale of the Old West, where the priests were about as rugged as anyone.

Led by Father Athanasius Peters, six members of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, or “Carmelites,” came here from Scipio in east central Kansas in August 1881 and celebrated the first Mass in the region that would one day be known as the Permian Basin.

They changed the settlement’s name from Grelton Railway Station to Marienfeld, which is German for “Mary’s Field,” and built the monastery and a church, St. Joseph’s, that was the first Catholic church between Fort Worth and El Paso. Established alongside the Texas Pacific Railroad, the town was renamed Stanton in 1890.

Reggie Baker chairs the Martin County Convent Foundation, which has spent $1.25 million restoring the two-story adobe building with four-foot-thick walls and a stone foundation and the foundation plans a $500,000 expenditure to construct a nearby building with a ballroom, kitchen, bathroom, bride’s room, gift shop, lecture hall, library and offices.

“When you walk through it today, the monastery is an interpretive center much like a museum with rustic Victorian furnishings,” Baker said. “There was eventually a population of 35-45 monks who left a large footprint all over West Texas.

“They were renegades who didn’t have permission to do what they did. They got crossways with the leader of the Carmelite hierarchy, loaded their wagons at night and came south with farm implements that they felt belonged to them.

“Some people called them scoundrels and others said they were entrepreneurs. Whatever else they were, they were tough guys.”

Baker said the Marienfeld Carmelites sold the grounds, monastery and church in 1897 to the Sisters of Mercy, who built a parochial school for boys and girls and used the monastery for their living quarters and a chapel.

The First Baptist Church Sunday school teacher said the monks moved on to New Orleans and eventually to Straubing, Germany, and Boxmeer, The Netherlands, while the sisters stayed here till a tornado damaged the buildings in 1938 and they moved to Slaton, where they still operate the Mercy Retreat Center.

Baker said a book by Rosa Latimer called ‘The Spirit of Mercy on the West Texas Wind’ that tells the story of the monks and sisters is on sale at the monastery for $14.50. He said the 40-by-80-foot building, which also has a basement, “was in a serious state of disrepair” when the foundation took possession of it 30 years ago.

“It had eroded and been vandalized,” he said. “Two families had lived there over the years. The Slaton Jaycees opened it as a haunted house and then gave it to a non-profit for the living quarters of wives and kids whose fathers were serving overseas during World War II. It’s a unique combination of Mexican adobe with gothic windows.”

Tours may be scheduled at hcmstanton.org/get-involved/visit.

The Very Rev. Michael Sis, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of San Angelo, said the Carmelites “traveled throughout West Texas and Eastern New Mexico spreading the Catholic faith to the growing population of immigrant families ...

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