32 - Religious Developments in Mexico, 1865–1945

Summary

In 1899, Father Ignacio García, a country priest ministering in Atlacomulco, published an epistolary account of popular religious mores titled El catolicismo expirante. This now forgotten tract was so damningly picturesque that it is worth citing at length by way of introduction. “I hold as absurd and ridiculous,” García fulminated in one of eight “humble treatises” to the archbishop of Mexico, Próspero María Alarcón y Sánchez,

the custom of believing that pouring pitchers of water over bodies on the sepulchre benefits the dead, simply because the water was near the shroud during the benediction. Absurd and ridiculous the ringing of bells for the bringing to church of every pound of wax; and the coming into church of dancers carrying bulls made of straw or of mummers holding dead squirrels, which are proffered to the lips of the women with the formula: “Kiss the son of your mother.” Absurd and ridiculous that the parish priest, dressed in cape and stole and preceded by cross and candles, should process to the cemetery gate to receive such dancers…. Absurd and immoral those customs opposed to morality, such as removing images from church, carrying them to specific places, there bringing two or three barrels of pulque [fermented cactus juice], drinking furiously, and then, in this state of drunkenness, processing to church at 8 or 9 at night.