MEXICO’S RELIGIOUS WAR.

Evening Star, Issue 22083, 17 July 1935, Page 6

MEXICO’S RELIGIOUS WAR.

An incident which is reported to-day of Catholic students being fired on by machine guns when they were on their way to present a [petition to , a State Governor will not loom large in thehistory of Mexico’s religious war. An American Catholic bishop has just published a book which he calls ‘ Blooddrenched Altars,’ describing the persecution in Mexico. It is to be presumed that he had reason for his title. Russia has not been more thorough than the Central American republic in its efforts to suppress the church. The campaign, in its latest extreme form, has lasted for several years, but Bishop Kelley can speak of the religious “ terror ” as intermittent for twenty years. The Bishop sets forth what would happen if Mexican laws were in force in the United States and were applied to a Protestant denomination, for example, the Methodist Episcopal Church. It would not be permitted to own any building. ’All Methodist colleges would be confiscated and closed. No Methodist body could receive any legacy for smi,port of its work. No Methodist clergyman could direct, or even teach, in a college or school. To utter a prayer at any meeting would make the meeting illegal. No burial services could be recited over the grave of a Methodist. No Methodist clergyman could use a religious form ,in officiating at a marriage. All children born to Methodist parents would belong, not to them, but to the State. In short, there would be no Methodist Church. “ Conditions in Mexico are not.” he insists, “ a challenge to the Catholic Church. They do not constitute an exclusively Catholic problem. They are, first and foremost, a challenge to justice, and the moral law of Nature. They are, secondly, a challenge to Christian civilisation.” It is to the Roman Catholic Church that 95 per cent, of the Mexican people belong, making the war against it virtually a war against religion. The church in Mexico has had its own sins to answer for, as was the case in Russia. The gulf has been wide between its professions and practice. The church at its best, however, must have been vastly superior to millions of Mexicans in their natural state, just as there were hundreds of country priests in Russia shedding sweetness and light in the darkness around them. The Mexican Government does not admit that it makes war on religion, but there is a plethora of evidence that the Mexican Government speaks with two voices, using one for its own people and the other for the world at large, more especially for the United States, in which strong feeling has been roused by the latest campaign. Dr Charles S. Macfarland, general secretary, emeritus, .of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, after studying the question for six weeks on the spot, has no doubt that the clear trend of the Mexican Government is atheistic. Sacred things are treated blasphemously in schools. Rites and practices of a “ revolutionary ” character, in place of the ordinary Christian acts of belief, such as baptisms, christenings, weddings, and the like, are reported from different parts of the country. Dr Macfarland does his best to be fair to both parties. “ The Government of Mexico, with all its weaknesses, ” he declares, “ is undoubtedly far more earnest in its desire for social reform than its critics admit. The Roman Catholic Church in Mexico has done very much more for the people of Mexico than the State will allow. They aro both powerful—the State, through its political, and material forces; the church, by its hold upon the hearts of. the people. The present conflict, if protracted, will rack and wreck the nation, while, on the other hand, a Government progreaV

sive and sane, and a church hierarchy, making fewer claims, but offering larger /ice, might save the nation from its present state of political and moral chaos.” It was indicated a few weeks ago that the new President, General Cardenas, might be ready to relax the harshness of oppression, in revolt against the influence of General Calles, who originated it in its latest phase Avhen he was President, and is believed generally to bo the power behind the throne. But his concessions have not yet gone very far.