Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T02:03:56.087Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Compatibility of Church and State in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Frederick C. Turner*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut

Extract

Although Church-State Relations have seldom been viewed from the standpoint of nationalism, they raise a series of questions concerning the patterns of loyalty which citizens render to both Church and State. Historians frequently find common religion to be an element of nationalism, but in the nominally Catholic countries of Latin America references to “common religion” in fact hide major diversities and degrees of belief. If reiterations of a common religious heritage by the mass of a population can strengthen thensentiments of common origin and national purpose, open conflict between religious groups may also belie national unity. Religious and national loyalties may be overlapping and mutually reinforcing, or they may be contradictory and antagonistic. The nature of the loyalties differs in time even within the same national context.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1967

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 On the shift in relations under Lázaro Cárdenas, see Brown, Lyle C., “Mexican Church-State Relations, 1933-1940,” A Journal of Church and State, VI, No. 2 (Spring 1964).Google Scholar

2 Tannenbaum, Frank, Peace by Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933), p. 61.Google Scholar

3 Quoted in Gruening, Ernest, Mexico and Its Heritage (New York: The Century Company, 1928), p. 205.Google Scholar

4 Heroles, Jesús Reyes, La integración de las ideas (Vol. 3, El liberalismo mexicano, 3 vols., México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1957-1961), p. 226.Google Scholar

5 Schmitt, Karl M., “Catholic Adjustment to the Secular State: The Case of Mexico, 1867-1911,” The Catholic Historical Review, XLVIII, No. 2 (July 1962), 203, 204.Google Scholar

6 Schmitt, Karl M., “The Diaz Conciliation Policy on State and Local Levels 1876-1911,” Hispanic American Historical Review, XL, No. 4 (November 1960), 532.Google Scholar

7 The New York Times, November 27, 1910, Part 5, p. 4:3.

8 The New York Times, May 23, 1911, p. 1:7.

9 Dr. Atl [Gerardo Murillo], Palabras de un hombre al pueblo americano (Orizaba, Ver.: n.p., 1915), pp. 43, 44.

10 Reprint entitled Speech of General Alvarado, Governor of the State of Yucatán, At the Closing Session of the Second Pedagogic Congress, Held at Mérida (n.p.: n.p., 1916), p. 13.

11 Paganel, A. [Carlo de Fornaro], What the Catholic Church Has Done to Mexico (New York: Latin-American News Association, 1916), p. 15.Google Scholar

12 Cabrera's study was published at Veracruz, in Forum magazine, in pamphlet form by the Carrancista junta in New York, and in several Mexican newspapers in the United States. For a bitter and righteously indignant indictment of the Mexican revolutionaries by North American Catholics, which includes many “eyewitness” accounts of atrocities and persecutions of the Catholic clergy in Mexico, see Kelley, Francis Clement, The Book of Red and Yellow; Being a Story of Blood and a Yellow Streak (Chicago: The Catholic Church Extension Society of the United States of America, 1916), pp. 815, 39-43, 79, 147.Google Scholar

13 Obregón, Alvaro, Ocho mil kilómetros en campaña (Vol. V, “Fuentes para la Historia de la Revolución Mexicana,” Manuel González Ramírez, ed.; México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1959), p. 123.Google Scholar

14 Quirk, Robert E., The Mexican Revolution, 1914-1915: The Convention of Aguascalientes (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1960), pp. 188191.Google Scholar

15 Quirk, Robert E., “The Mexican Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1910-1929, An Ideological Study” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1950), p. 250.Google Scholar

16 James, Earle K., “Church and State in Mexico,” Foreign Policy Reports, XI, No. 9 (July 3, 1935), 116.Google Scholar

17 MacFarland, Charles S., Chaos in Mexico: The Conflict of Church and State (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935), p. 162.Google Scholar

18 For an excellent statement of the early political significance of the Virgin of Guadalupe, see Hugh M. Hamill, Jr., “The Virgin of Guadalupe and the Origins of Mexican Nationalism,” paper read before the Ohio Academy of History, April 1961.

19 Quoted in Elias, Arturo M., The Mexican People and the Church (New York: n.p., n.d.), p. 48.Google Scholar

20 For a typical statement of this modern viewpoint, see Montiel, Joaquín Márquez, La doctrina social de la iglesia y la legislación obrera mexicana (2d ed., México: Editorial Jus, 1958), pp. 203, 206.Google Scholar

21 Corro, José Cantú, Patria y raza (México: Escuela Tipográfica Salesiana, 1924), pp. 3335, 53, 54.Google Scholar

22 See, for instance, Paniker, Raimundo, Patriotismo y cristianidad (Madrid: Ediciones Rialp, S. A., 1961), pp. 119121.Google Scholar