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It's an old adage that politics makes for strange bedfellows. Perhaps the latest example of this might be liberal California senator Barbara Boxer's support of the California Mission Preservation Act, a bill signed into law last week by the president. The Act sets aside $10 million over five years as funds for the restoration and preservation of California's twenty-one missions, their artwork, artifacts, and indigenous plants. Boxer emphasizes on her website that aside from their historical significance, the missions bring in substantial income for local businesses from tourists visiting the state. The Chicago Tribune offered a helpful comparison on that point—the missions bring more money into the state's economy than any other public attraction, excepting Disneyland.

All well and good, but there's a catch … one that Ms. Boxer has apparently decided to overlook. Nineteen of the twenty-one missions are owned by the Roman Catholic Church and, moreover, have active congregations. Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a lawsuit in a federal court last week, asserting the bill violates the Constitution. Says Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director, "If this type of assistance is upheld, every house of worship in America that is deemed 'historic' could demand upkeep and repair courtesy of the taxpayer. The Constitution simply does not allow the government to force a taxpayer to subsidize the maintenance of houses of worship. That's a core principle of separation of church and state."

It's a contention the Franciscan friars who founded these missions would have thought strange— yet also strangely familiar. They operated not under the aegis of a republican government bent on accommodating the various branches of Protestant (and even Catholic) traditions, but under the direct authority of the Spanish crown. In fact, the Spanish royal court and the church had an arrangement so unlike our own today that the friars would have found Lynn's argument absurd. But they also understood how the entanglement of church and state worked against them.

A native of San Diego, I grew up with the missions—studying them in school, visiting them on family outings. I loved wandering through the adobe-walled courtyards of the mission, enjoying the soothing sounds of nearby fountains and feeling the cool touch of the floors beneath me. I delved into the history of the missions, what life was like for Indian converts, and acquainted myself with the dreams and work of the missionaries. And I looked forward to praying in the serenity of the mission's sanctuary—at least when tourists weren't pouring through.

Sometimes our family would venture across the valley and visit the other historical fixture of San Diego's Old Town. The presidio, still towering over California's Interstate 8, tells the story of the missions from a significantly different perspective—one of colonial control, military excursions, political maneuvering. Built to withstand attack, the small but well-stocked presidio was a monument to military efficiency, a refuge for those fleeing attack. It was a refuge the missionaries and their converts would look to more than once.

Just what led up to this arrangement? In 1492, the year Columbus sighted land in the West Indies, the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella finished a long but victorious reconquista of the lands stolen from them centuries before by Muslims from North Africa. For this service, and for their promises to convert the "infidels" in the newly discovered territories to Roman Catholicism, Pope Innocent VIII granted to the monarchs extensive rights over church matters—a grant otherwise known as the patronato real. The king, it was said in the 16th century, wielded two swords—one as ruler of the realm and the other as vicar of the church in the Indies.

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