Exhibition Review

The graceful dome and tower of the eighteenth-century Mission San José protrude elegantly from the trees just beyond the stark white movie screens of a drive-in theater on the south side of San Antonio, Texas. Many of the visitors who come to the mission get their first glimpse of it from across the theater lot as they approach from busy Roosevelt Avenue. Arriving at San José itself, they leave their cars in the lot behind the old Spanish mission and pass through the modern visitor center (opened in 1996) built by the National Park Service in a style designed to complement the antiquity of the mission. There they can orient themselves to the history of settlement, colonization, and missionary efforts along the northern edge of Spain's American territories before they enter the actual mission compound through an arched gate in the old stone walls.	1
Once inside the compound, the church immediately captivates visitors with its majestic dome and tower as well as the ornate religious sculpture on its facade and on the famed Rose Window of the sacristy. Framed by feathery pepper trees and the spines of yucca plants, the church building beckons visitors from the far side of the compound yard. Tourists often snap photographs as they work their way along the reconstructed compound walls and past the old well around to the front door. But for some park visitors, especially those arriving on a Saturday in May or June, the doors of the old church may stand closed while a wedding or funeral occupies the sacred space. The churches in San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, visitors soon discover, are more than museums of the Texas colonial past; they continue to serve active communities of worship as living Catholic parishes.	2
The San Antonio Missions National Historical Park comprises four related sites in San Antonio, stretching from Nuestra Señora de la Purisma Concepción (Mission Concepción) in an urban neighborhood on the city's near south side to San José y San Miguel de Aguayo (Mission San José), where the main visitors' facilities are located, to the more rural settings of San Juan Capistrano (Mission San Juan) and San Francisco de la Espada (Mission Espada) about eight miles south of the downtown area. The park also includes a fifth location, Rancho de las Cabras, the former ranching center that supplied beef and other products to Mission Espada; it lies about twenty miles to the southeast of the mission, but the site remains undeveloped at this point. In addition, remnants of the missions' extensive system of water ditches known as acequias, including the Espada Aqueduct and Dam, can be seen along the Mission Trail, a scenic network of roads and bike trails that connects the main sites of the park. Conspicuously absent from the park is the first of San Antonio's missions, San Antonio de Valero, better known as the Alamo. Its role in Texas history as the site of a fateful battle in 1836 separates it from the historical narratives of the other missions. Today the Daughters of the Republic of Texas maintain and operate the Alamo.	3
The National Park Service assumed control of the San Antonio missions in 1983 when it executed cooperative agreements with the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Antonio, the State of Texas, and others. The key question when Congress authorized the park in 1978 was whether the nonestablishment clause of the United States Constitution could be overcome in a federal park that included active churches. The cooperative agreement worked out between the government and the Catholic Church has provided a satisfactory solution. It allows the National Park Service access to and use of the grounds and secular buildings in order, in the words of the agreement, to "provide public interpretation of the Missions' secular historical significance" while the church continues to control the religious structures and maintains unrestricted use of the missions for ecclesiastical purposes.	. . .