Asa Van Wormer Butterfield, retired Episcopal priest and California-licensed psychologist, died Monday, September 1, at an IMSS hospital in Guadalajara, after months of declining health, many years after surviving lung and kidney surgery in 2003.
In Guadalajara, Butterfield will be mourned by his devoted partner Martha Avila Nuño and an extended step-family. He will be remembered by the many friends he made during the 12 years he lived here in retirement as a convivial, open-minded and learned conversation partner and a prolific writer, who participated in groups such as the American Legion, the American Society, St. Mark’s Anglican church and coffee clubs. He will also be remembered for helping in 2002 via the Guadalajara Colony Reporter to expose an Episcopal bishop, Samuel Espinosa, who was deposed after allegations of grand theft
In the wider world, Butterfield leaves an impressive legacy in the fields of psychology and religion, especially Latin American ministry.
He was born March 20, 1928, in Cincinnati to a distinguished family. His father was sheriff of Hamilton County. His mother was active in the Girl Scouts and has a senior center named after her.
After serving in the U.S. military as an infantry lieutenant in Korea, Butterfield received his call to ministry in the voice of God speaking in Spanish. “How strange,” he wrote, “because that traumatized young man barely knew the Spanish language!” This may have been the first of Butterfield’s brushes with the mystical, which included witnessing spontaneous remission of disease in medical and church settings. He was uncomfortable explaining this topic, he wrote diplomatically, to those not “well informed about such things.”
Perhaps taking a cue from that divine voice speaking Spanish, Butterfield went in 1954 for studies in art history to Mexico City, where he met and married an American researcher at McGraw-Hill, Martha Lozier. He later studied on government scholarships at the University of the Americas in Mexico City, at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, and the University of California (Medical Center) in San Francisco, leading both to ordination at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, as an Episcopal priest in 1966 and to a license as a psychotherapist in 1970. He sometimes termed his approach “metapsychology,” in which the healing of persons involved the spiritual dimension, “a term not customarily amenable to the psychological professional.”
Butterfield’s profession as a priest was notable for his pioneering work developing the Latino mission of the Episcopal church in the United States (in Los Angeles, Oklahoma and San Francisco, where his service included a largely gay congregation) and in Latin America (Panama and Costa Rica). He was proud of his involvement, starting in 1983, in an ecumenical refugee center for exiled Salvadorans at Saint Mary’s in Pacific Grove, California.
Butterfield wrote prolifically in English and Spanish — four books and countless articles on Christian belief and worship, biblical analysis, Hispanic Anglicanism, physical and psychological healing, pastoral care, evangelism, prayer and socio-political changes in Latin America — and generously shared these charming and often personal articles with friends. He dedicated his books to San Andres Seminary in Mexico City. He often wrote under his pen name “Padre Macarios” as well as under the letterheads of his “Misión Autodidáctica” and “La Misión Hispana.” He had a wide circle of e-mail correspondents during his later years, focusing on the same themes as his earlier writing as well as on newer topics.
Father Butterfield’s four biological children from his marriage in Mexico in 1954 to Martha Lozier, now deceased, are: Penelope, Daniel, and Sarah Butterfield (of Northern California) and François Loziere (of Ketchikan, Alaska).
A memorial service takes place Friday, September 5, 2:30 p.m. at St. Mark’s Anglican/Episcopal church, Aztecas and Chichimecas, Guadalajara.