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Closing Comment: “Personal Enemies of God: Anticlericals and Anticlericalism in Revolutionary Mexico, 1915-1940”*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Roberto Blancarte
Roberto Blancarte*
Affiliation:
El Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico
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Extract

In a contribution made some time ago, I stressed the diversity of factors which came together in the anticlerical constitutional articles and paragraphs that were approved during the Constituent Congress at Querétaro of 1916-17. The first of these factors—I argued—was the not unreasonable belief held by many Mexican revolutionaries that the Catholic Church had collaborated with the government of the military usurper, Victoriano Huerta, in 1913-14. In this regard, the political participation of the National Catholic Party had also been decisive in influencing anticlerical opinion.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , April 2009 , pp. 589 - 599
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2009

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Footnotes

*

NB: editors’ translation.

References

1 Congreso Constituyente 1916–1917, Diario de debates (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, 1960), vol. 2, p. 1049.

2 Unless stated, all citations are from the authors’ respective essays in this issue.

3 By “integralist-intransigence”, I refer to Émile Poulat’s extensive work on Catholicism.

4 See Rémond, René L’anticléricalisme en France de 1815 à nos jours (1976. Paris: Éditions Complexe,Google Scholar 1992).

5 Although the bibliography here is vast, a good starting point is Mémoires de l’Abbé Grégoire (Paris: Éditions de la Santé, 1989).

6 Bastian, Jean-Pierre Protestantismos y modernidad latinoamericana: historia de unas minorías religiosas activas en América Latina (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1994);Google Scholar idem., Los disidentes: sociedades protestantes y revolución en México, 1872–1911 (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1989).

7 Blancarte, Roberto Historia de la Iglesia Católica en México, 1929–1982 (Mexico City: El Colegio Mexiquense-Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992).Google Scholar

8 See, for example, Gill’s, Anthony Rendering unto Caesar: the Catholic Church and the State in Latin America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998),Google Scholar and Chesnut, R. Andrew Competitive Spirits: Latin America’s New Religious Economy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).Google Scholar

9 On this see my contribution, “Aspectos internacionales del conflicto religioso mexicano en la década de los treinta,” in Cultura e identidad nacional, ed. Blancarte, Roberto (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica-Conaculta, 1994), pp. 233–260.Google Scholar

10 The concept of “laicity” (which does not truly exist in English) is borrowed from the French laïcité, translates in Spanish as laicidad, and has a similar but not identical meaning to the concept of “secularly.” The term “lay” comes from the Greek word laikós, meaning “of the people,” and led to both laic in French and to laico in Spanish. It was originally used in reference to faithful Christians, to distinguish them from members of the clergy who control the sacraments—deacons, priests, prelates, or bishops. It was not until the nineteenth century that the term “lay” made reference to a social space beyond ecclesiastical control. See my contribution, “México: A Mirror for the Sociology of Religion,” in Beckford, James A. and Demerath, N. J. III (eds.), The Sage Handbook of the Sociology of Religion (London: Sage Publications Ltd., 2007), pp. 710–727.Google Scholar

11 Burleigh, Michael Earthly Powers. The Conflict between Religion and Politics from the French Revolution to the Great War (London: Harper Press, 2005);Google Scholar idem., Sacred Causes. Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to Al Qaeda (London: Harper Press, 2006).