Martinez Hewlett and James Gilroy

[00:01] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: I'm Martinez Hewlett. H e w l e t t. My first name is Martinez. My nickname is Marty. I'm 80 years old. Today's date is March 18, 2023. We are in Taos, New Mexico. My interview partner is Jim Gilroy. Sitting across from me, a dear, dear friend.

[00:23] JAMES GILROY: My name is Jim Gilroy, age 76. Today's date is March 18, 2023. Again, we're in Taos, New Mexico. The name of my interview partner is Martinez Hewlett, better known as Marty, and he's a dear friend.

[00:45] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: So I'm just imagining, Jim, that today we're in Michael's restaurant, as we normally are, and we're going to just have one of our conversations about theology and science. That seems to me where we always wind up. So let me let you. Let me let you start it off, all right?

[01:07] JAMES GILROY: No, it's true, Marty. It's two areas of definitely of interest that are real passions for both of us has to do with our own science and our science careers, as well as our own faith backgrounds, you know. So we discuss these topics regularly in terms of my science background. Honestly, when I started out graduating from high school, I was fortunate enough to join the Jesuits. It's a religious society in the Roman Catholic Church. I was a member for ten years, and in that I studied philosophy as well as religious studies of variety of different topics. During those ten years, I had the opportunity to go and serve in Peru, where I taught high school for three years, and then from there on to study a euro theology in Chile. It was during that year that I came to the realization that I really wanted to be married and have a family. Upon leaving the Jesuits, my jesuit colleagues back in Peru were looking for somebody with an agricultural background to help work on projects in the mountains of Peru. So when I came back to the states, decided to start a career in ag science. And that's what brought me to the University of Arizona. Got a bachelor's degree and then a master's degree with emphasis on international development in plant genetics. From there, I went and I worked in Mexico. The job opportunity improved. Didn't realize, but I spent four years in Mexico, and eventually my wife and I settled here in northern New Mexico. I pursued agriculture on my property here in northern New Mexico. Small farm. We did produce, we did culinary greens, planted fruit trees. But the job opportunity came up to teach high school. So I taught high school for 20 years at Taos High School, taught biology, then on to the University of New Mexico, Taos. That was just starting then and helped start the science program there, taught philosophy, and then served my last eight years as dean of instruction. That was my science background, faith background. I was what you'd probably say, I was raised in a catholic ghetto in Phoenix, Arizona. Elementary school was part of St. Francis Xavier Parish. High school was a jesuit high school called Brophy. And it was there that I really started to have. It had an impact on my own faith. And it was a period of four years of science, or, excuse me, of religious ed that encouraged us to analyze, to become critical thinkers, to question the beliefs even of our own catholic faith. At that time it inspired me as well as the teachers. I had to join the Jesuits again, another ten years of theological as well as spiritual development, spiritual exercises of Ignatius. And that stayed with me my whole career, that faith background. And it's been the juxtaposition of my teaching of science as well as my love of theology, Marty, that I think has drawn us together and continued this conversation from when we meth. Exactly. Yeah. And I remember that day very well. You walked into our office at UNM Taos and wondered if there was a possibility of, you know, teaching some science courses. And I said, sure, ken, love to see your resume. And when I looked at that, I said, oh my gosh, this is definitely a gentleman. That would be a real benefit not only to our students but to the community at whole. So Marty, a little bit about you, your background.

[05:25] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: So like you, I'm a, you said a catholic ghetto. I'll call it a cradle Catholic from a New Orleans Creole family. Creoles in New Orleans were universally catholic at that time. So I grew up in that kind of family where church was just central to what we did and went to Catholic grammar school, ultimately became an altar boy, you know, serving at mass weekly, entertaining the nuns. We're in the first few I can remember because my partner and I would be ultra special religious. We had our hands folded just right. We would genuflect properly everything. The nuns were an ecstasy about both of us. My friend John at the time, but at age eleven, my father passed away suddenly. I left for school that morning, was called out of class, told I had to go home and he'd had a heart attack and died. My mother recounts that I went upstairs to my room and cried in the house. And then when I came downstairs she said, I never cried again. And it didn't hit me until much later in life that that was a seminal moment. I apparently at eleven years old, made the decision that if this is how God runs the world, I want nothing to do with it. Okay. And so I still was religious in the sense of attending church and doing all that, but I had locked out the spiritual part. I didn't want anything to do with it, and I was heading to science anyway. So off I went into high school and eventually college. I went to a Carmelite high school in Los Angeles and then USC, University of Southern California. Did my. My major in chemistry. Went to work in research, actually, at the Veterans Administration hospital out in the valley in southern California, where I had grown up in LA. It was during that time that I met the wonderful woman sitting over here to my left, dear Gail, who became my wife. During that time, I was at the lab, and shortly after we got married, we decided to head off to graduate school at Arizona. Same place you were at. The same. I think, in fact, we may have already.

[07:45] JAMES GILROY: I think we were.

[07:47] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: We were there at the same time. We didn't know each other. Did my PhD in biochemistry, then off to MIT for a postdoctoral period in virology, and then back to the University of Arizona, where I was a faculty member until 2002, when I retired from there, came here to Taosh White House. Well, Gail had grown up in New Mexico, and we were constantly coming here. She grew up in Albuquerque, in Santa Fe, and so we were coming north. We'd come to see family. We'd come to hike, to ski, to go to scientific meetings, all that. So finally, it was time come home. And so we wound up. I wound up in your office that day, not wanting to leave academia, even though I left Arizona and found a home at UNM Taos. During that journey, though, at Arizona, I encountered the Dominicans at the Newman center at University of Arizona, and one specific dominican father, Michael Sherwin, who had a great influence on me and began my process of coming back into the spirituality that was my catholic upbringing. And in that encounter, I wound up in this discussion of science and faith, mainly at the graduate theological union at Berkeley, where I worked with Ted Peters and Bob Russell on issues surrounding biology and faith, mainly about biological evolution, as it turned out, because that was at the time the critical issue that was confronting people of faith who were scientists, especially biological scientists. And that's when you met me. I was working with the people at GTU in their program that had to do with science and the spiritual quest, as it was called, and doing programs in universities. And I came to you, I remember, in mirror by star, to see if we could do something here in Taos. And I wound up eventually doing some of those things that. Of interest, but that started our discussion.

[10:02] JAMES GILROY: It did. It did. And, you know, 25 years of teaching when I met you, I taught evolutionary biology every year, and I was always fascinated by the reaction I would get from a classroom of students and our Taos community being the tricultural community it is. We had many different perspectives when it came to evolution in creation. And I remember just dealing with that in the classroom just stimulated even more. How do you go ahead and teach science? Because we're both science educators. How do you teach science to students that come from a variety of different faith backgrounds, from indigenous faiths all the way through christian faiths, Judaism, Muslim, Sikhs, and the like, of which we have all of those elements in our taoist community? And I think that's when you mentioned you were part of the graduate theological and the program in science and theology. I had not finished my theology degree. I only did one year. It just animated me to continue that investigation into the history of our own faith background. What I'm interested in, Marty, what are some. A number of people will tell us the fact that you and I are both of the catholic tradition. You know, they'll perceive, you know, our faith background as just doctrine and dogma and perhaps even an element of, you know, controlling what people think. I think your experience in the Dominican's mind and the Jesuits was encouraging us to be critical thinkers, you know, scientific thinkers. What are the elements of faith that you find critical that in your, you know, life, you. You like to share with the broader community?

[11:57] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: Well, especially in the science and religion, science and theology conversation, there are elements of faith that. That I need to sustain me in that conversation, and one of them is being immersed in the Dominicans as I became of eventually becoming a lay member of the order. Being immersed in the Dominicans and in Thomas Aquinas, mainly. And it's Thomas's take on this whole thing, on theology writ large, but specifically on how we view our world, of the natural world. Dominicans are really immersed in the natural world in many ways. And the idea of thinking through everything from the position that there's only so much we can actually know about these greater issues, these things that are beyond science. Okay, meta questions, as they're sometimes called, that we are limited philosophically in how much we can know, and that philosophical positions that we take depend on our experiences in these. And so when I come to these questions in the science and theology conversations I have, especially with scientists, I have to rely on that philosophical underpinning which then keeps the faith piece more or less intact for me, even when it's challenged right now, for instance, in teaching my class in genetics, I'm having. I have to tell the students, I'm a philosopher and a scientist. I do both, and I do theology. So I try to bring it all for them at certain times in class. I'm not teaching them religion, but I'm teaching them how to think about it. And we talk about the idea of mutation and what mutation means. It means changes in DNA. It means inheritable changes that happen. Sometimes mutations lead to bad outcomes. We know that. I mean, we have genetic disease, and a lot of our class is actually talking about things like sickle cell anemia and tay Sachs, you name it. But then I tell them that, you know, we duplicate our DNA, but not accurately. We make mistakes when we do it. So I challenge them to think, why make any mistakes? And the reason is, I tell them, one reason is to make the darwinian model work, to have variations in the population that can be selected. So that means that at the heart of the darwinian model is this thing called mutation that has evil outcomes. That's a challenge to people of faith. And I find it not just in students, but even in these sort of high level meetings I go to in theology, I hear people discussing the evil of the discipline I work in, that it's based on an evil model, if you will. And that's a challenge for scientists of faith as well as for students who are trying to become scientists.

[15:04] JAMES GILROY: Well, and I think both of us have dealt with criticism from different spectrums. I remember I had, in one of my classes on evolution, I had a student come up to me after class, and she told me she was going to pray for me because she says, I'm going to hell because I believe in evolution and not in the genesis story of creation. Within seven days, as well as we have the other spectrum of our. Of our broader community, our science community, that thinks we're, you know, definitely on the wrong path as people of faith, because all there is is this material world that's in front of us, and, you know, that we're nothing more than sort of chance events in this history of evolution. How do you deal with both of these, you know, ends of the spectrum?

[16:03] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: Sure. I've had students like that also. I had one at Arizona before I came here, who came to me in tears in freshman biology, literally in tears. A young woman from Southern California from a farming community out near Palm Springs. And she told me she wanted to go to medical school. But now she was faced with taking biology, and her father was frightened that she was going to lose her faith that she was going to encounter this science that dealt with evolution. And she was going to lose her faith. And therefore, what was she to do? She wanted to be a physician. So I kind of took her under my wing as a. As an advisor during that first year. And I challenged her. I said, okay, you're going to take this freshman biology class. It's two semesters. I taught the first semester. And the evolutionary biology department actually taught the second. I said, okay, anytime something comes up in class, you're going to make an appointment. You're going to come to my office. And I'm going to give you something to read that will help you. And so I had all these books on science and theology. Especially dealing with evolution. Like Jack Hout's books on the subject as catholic theologian. And so during that semester, we had a. We had a reading relationship. She would read these books, come and ask me. I got her through it. She's a physician now. So there's one example on the other side. The challenge from our scientific colleagues.

[17:35] JAMES GILROY: Especially when they say, you know, that I don't believe in faith. I believe only in what's tangible, what I can measure. Do you have a response?

[17:46] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: Yeah. I immediately tell them that it takes faith to be a scientist. And they say, what do you mean? I said, well, you have some assumptions you make that are faith based assumptions. Mariano Artigas, a great philosopher of science. Who passed away a few years ago, called these are presuppositions in order to do science. He says there are three presuppositions. The first one is that the universe is ordered. You have to believe that there's no reason it should be okay. The second is that you have a mind that can understand the order. Again, there's no a priori reason that should be true. And the third is that it's a good thing to understand the order of the universe. It has an ethical value. And so I tell students and my colleagues. That I couldn't go into the laboratory and work. If I didn't believe all three of those were true. Now, my colleagues will answer, well, of course they're true. And I say, well, how do you know that? Prove it to me. Where's the data that says they're true? Well, it happens every day when I'm in the lab. No, no, you're in the lab because they're true. It's hard for them to grasp that they have a faith commitment in science.

[19:01] JAMES GILROY: I think you and I, too, have also been fortunate. With some of the influences we've had. I mean, you've known many Dominicans with science backgrounds. I've known many Jesuits with science backgrounds, astronomers, archaeologists, mathematicians. And I think when you look at the history, you know, of our faith background, I mean, filled with people that made discoveries and innovations in the world of science that had a faith background. But to get to the heart of the matter, as a man of faith, what are those elements of faith above and beyond the doctrines and dogma of our catholic background? What are those elements of faith that keep you going, that get you up every morning, that inspire you?

[19:51] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: Well, you know, we've talked about this a lot, and, yeah, beyond the, I'm gonna say, almost esoteric theology and philosophy of Aquinas, you know, that's just there. What are the emotional pieces? And for me, especially after moving to Taos, I'll say that when we were leaving Arizona and I left the university, we were moving here. Didn't know I was going to be at the University of New Mexico, but we were moving to Taos. Gail took me aside and said, you know, here at the University of Arizona, you've been living in your head. When you go to New Mexico, you're going to have to start living in your heart. And she was very clear with me about the spirituality of this place. And to be honest, since I've been here, that has hit me more and more about my own faith, such that I tend to focus more on what a dear friend in Arizona once told me. Tomlindell, a deacon in the Episcopal church in Tucson and a colleague at the university, said that he was challenged one day by a friend of his who was a Zen master, about the Eucharist, to tell. To say to him, whenever you're at Mass and you're experiencing that, try to be present as though you were there the first time it happened. And that has been, for me, a really moving thing to do, because it takes me back to the origins of our catholic faith, of our christian faith, we'll call it. What was the experience of those men and women who walked the planet with Jesus? What was that about? What did they experience? And can I incorporate that into my faith journey? So right now, you and I and Gail and Mary are reading this book, Jesus a pilgrimage for our experience. And I'm fascinated by that story.

[21:52] JAMES GILROY: It's very good. Myself as well.

[21:55] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: Yeah, James Martin's book. So that's what, that's sort of the emotional piece of my faith experience I know for myself.

[22:06] JAMES GILROY: When I retired from my career as a science educator, I realized I had not finished that degree in theology, I had one year, so I looked around for something that I thought would be something I could be engaged with and that would serve me well. And I found a program at the Ukrainian Catholic University on ecumenism, the Institute of Ecumenical Studies, studying of all the different christian backgrounds, orthodox, protestant, Catholic. And I finished that degree a couple years ago. But during that five years of study with them, I came to sort of a synthesis of what I find are sort of the kernels of my faith. And I would definitely start with Genesis, the story of creation, which is an analogy, you know, of who's the mover behind all of this, but not necessarily the what, which we explore in evolutionary biology. But the one comment at the end is when he saw it, he said it was good, very good. And that's a premise that I hold dear when people ask me, well, why are you a Christian? It honestly has to do with four books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and the life of Christ. And in that, what challenge me when Jesus first came to start his sort of more public life, you know, he goes ahead in front of his own community in Nazareth and goes ahead and reads, you know, the story of bringing the good news to the poor, liberation to captives and those imprisoned, healing of the sick. He continues on during his ministry to talk about loving your neighbor, and he meant loving everyone, no exceptions. And that's a high standard for anybody that lives on this planet. And then I think in closing, it's the. The beatitudes. Blessed are those, whether it's peacemakers or whatever. And then when it's asked, well, who are those that will be saved or who are those that will go to heaven or be among those that are considered the good or the righteous? He goes ahead and says, did you feed the hungry? Did you clothe the naked? Did you give housing to those that didn't? Did you visit the sick and the imprisoned? Those. I find the essentials of my christian faith, and I get frustrated sometimes with those that want to go ahead and, and have us follow a very rigid sort of doctrine. Not that doctrine isn't important. Not that dogma isn't important. I firmly believe that. But when it comes to the essentials of faith, it's found in that last statement in Genesis one about, it's all very good, this created world we live in, and then what's required of us in terms of how we live our faith here and now.

[25:36] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: So a great joy of our relationship has been the privilege of being part of your journey to your master's work at the ukrainian university in Lviv.

[25:50] JAMES GILROY: Lviv. Lviv, Ukraine.

[25:52] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: Right. And being able to read papers that you wrote and ultimately your thesis and be able to do that and learning through you more about ecumenism, because I really think that the science and theology enterprise has been an ecumenical experience for me, even though I didn't actually know it definitely has. And in many ways, I learned through that and then through you what ecumenism and interfaith is all about. And I had experiences that pushed me directions that I didn't expect, one of them being when Ted Peters and I were writing our first book on evolution and creation and theology and all of that that we wanted to take into account. Ted suggested we need to go and meet with and interview the people who were creation scientists. These are people in science who had founded an institute in San Diego, the Institute for Creation Research, who said they were doing science, but doing it along the guidelines laid out in Genesis, the seven days of creation. And my first reaction was, absolutely not. I don't want to go anywhere near those people. Ted said, why? I said, because I'll get in a fight. Okay. They're pretending to be scientists. I just can't stand being around them. So we concocted this plan where I flew to Berkeley first, and I worked with Ted, and we had a team of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who were working with us in this project. And they spent an evening filling me in on the history of creationism and biblical literalism and everything. The next morning, we flew to San Diego and went to our meetings at the institution Institute for Creation Research. And I was calm. They had calmed me down, and I didn't get into any fights, but I was curious. And at 1.1 of the scientists was leading me through their museum of creation research. Right. Each room was dedicated to a day of creation, and presumably it laid out their whole agenda. And we were in the room which had to do with where the things on earth were. I. So he said, this is the room where all the plants come into existence. Right. And I said, wait a minute. In Genesis, it says the seed bearing plants.

[28:21] JAMES GILROY: That's right.

[28:22] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: Right. I said, what about the other plants? You know, like the ferns, for instance, that don't gymnose the gymnosperns. And he said, well, we interpret the word plant to mean all plants in Genesis. I said, aha, I get it now.

[28:40] JAMES GILROY: Interpret.

[28:40] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: You're interpreting like we all do.

[28:43] JAMES GILROY: Yes.

[28:43] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: We're on the same page here. Okay.

[28:45] JAMES GILROY: Yes.

[28:46] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: And I felt a peace. I was in that ecumenical mindset that we talk about where we realize we're christians, even though you're Presbyterian and I'm catholic, it's still. Or we're people of faith, even though you're hindu and I'm all of that gelled at that moment and made the rest of the journey.

[29:07] JAMES GILROY: That's why I see Marty, honestly, as our work or, you know, our mission is dialoguing with both those people of faith that we might refer to as literalists and those scientists that we might refer to as agnostics or atheists, maintaining that dialogue, you know, in bringing those perspectives that we have from both perspectives with respect and with honesty, to hopefully just sort of broaden those visions, broaden those minds. You know, and I think you and I both get excited from our classroom experience when we can see students having that aha moment, you know, that they understand something more about this natural world. And I think when we deal with our faith communities and they have that aha moment and they appreciate the beauty and the work that science does.

[30:05] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: And I think that's what also drives me. You asked about what drives me on the emotional basis about the faith journey. It's also the science journey.

[30:14] JAMES GILROY: It is.

[30:14] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: I mean, because a lot of it is just the awesome things that you encounter on the pathway or things you learn about either in your own research or in the research of others. And you have to sit back at some place and say, this is just an unbelievable.

[30:30] JAMES GILROY: It is the complexity. I know when people ask me, well, what's your spiritual reading? I said, do you know what it is? Every week? Science magazine.

[30:39] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: Science magazine. And for me, as a virologist, sitting here in the tail end of this three year pandemic, I tell my students, this is like, I hate to say it, but a wonderful time for virologists.

[30:55] JAMES GILROY: Oh my gosh. I mean, how much we've learned in the lesson.

[30:58] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: Exactly. And we've accomplished. And it's just you sit back at times and say, wow, amazing. The whole vaccine story. When I tell. I'm going to talk about that not next week, but the week after in my genetics class, we're going to go over Covid and I've got to tell them what we did, what's been accomplished here nobody would have thought of even.

[31:20] JAMES GILROY: 20 years ago when you read the life of Christ. I think one of the major things that he does consistently in his three years of public life is heal the sick. And I think when I look at our students that we've had that have gone on in health professions, we honestly feel they've lived out, you know, that ministry of healing the sick.

[31:42] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: It's true. It's true. And we have them here in our community, which is beautiful.

[31:46] JAMES GILROY: It is.

[31:46] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: We've produced over the 20 years, and you and I both, you worked on it first, and I joined, you set up the nursing program here at UNM Taos, which was at the time I thought, what are we doing? You know, this is amazing, but is this going to really serve? Oh, my gosh. Every nurse in this community is one that I've trained in some way, or you've trained in some way. And it's hard to go to Holy Cross and not be, isn't it? Encountered.

[32:16] JAMES GILROY: No. No. With people we know, students that we've had. I know I'd be remiss. And one last comment here is, I know you mentioned Gail, who's here with us this morning, who wasn't able to be here with us is my wife Mary, who's at home teaching. But I think both of these individuals have been critical for us, both in our lives of science as well as supports in our lives of faith. And it's our wives, Gail and Mary, and our children that have inspired us and brought us great joy.

[32:52] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: Absolutely. I totally agree with that. Both. All of those statements and then some.

[33:01] JAMES GILROY: Brother Hewlett, anything else?

[33:03] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: Brother Jim? I'm happy with this conversation, and Michael's not. Next week, you're going to be gone.

[33:10] JAMES GILROY: You'll be gone the week after, we'll.

[33:11] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: Be back at Michael's.

[33:12] JAMES GILROY: I look forward to it.

[33:13] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: If the people from Storycorp want to come by and take, they're more than.

[33:17] JAMES GILROY: Welcome to join us. We'd love it.

[33:19] MARTINEZ HEWLETT: We'd love it.