— I WANTED TO SEND A CLEAR SIGNAL. I WANTED IT TO BE CLEAR: SOMETHING QUITE SPECIAL IS GOING ON HERE! HE IS HERE!, THE ONE BEFORE WHOM WE FALL TO OUR KNEES! PAY ATTENTION!..........
(Pope Benedict XVI explaining kneeling Communion to Peter Seewald)
Communion 'any old way' was out for the May 2013 (in the first year of Francis) First Holy Communion,
at 'Spanish Community First Holy Communion held at the Church of Saint Bernadette' (somewhere in America?)
Pope Benedict's reform of the reform is not dead unless we, the laity, let it die thru our own despair and indifference.
It is definitely up to us laity to carry it forward!! Talk to your priests, politely! Ask them things like....
Father, have you ever considered saying the Mass Ad Orientem?
or Father, are the Holy Fragments which are on so many hands after Communion, Jesus Christ as well?
Don't expect the priest to 'make a beeline' for you the next time he sees you. You probably will not be invited to his next 'mutual admiration' get together. but you can still chase him down if you need him, say in the confessional.
>>>>...Much water has flown under the Tiber's bridges, carrying away splendor and mystery from Rome since the Pontificate of Pius XII.... [T]he banalities and translations which have ousted the sonerous Latin and Greek are of a supermarket quality which is quite unacceptable. Hand shaking and embarrassed smiles or smirks have replaced the older courtesies: kneeling is out, queuing is in, and the general tone is like BBC radio broadcast for tiny tots....<<<< [courtesy of pblosser and joseph pearce]
...It is very sad that Guinness, who passed away in 2000, did not live to see any restoration of the Liturgy which he loved.
I probably have said this before, but I will repeat it anyway: Laity! do not be discouraged when our priests and bishops continue to stop their ears at our Holy Father's call to restore worship, and reverence, and humility! Better people than we have endured the same frustration --only worse because they had no straw at which to grasp, no distant glimmer.
I believe God is testing us! Our clergy, as whole, have royally failed that test! So now He -has given us a pope who is reaching over and around disobedient and unbelieving clergy...straight out to us-laity.
Can a bishop keep us from hearing the Mass in Latin? No! The Holy Father has given that decision to us-laity!
Can a bishop keep us from kneeling for Communion? No! The Holy Father's humble example has rudely interrupted the United States Council of Catholic Bishops' slickly worded info-mercial for standing.[How these bishops must dread that someone will ask them the meaning of the Holy Father's gesture. There can be no good USCCB answer to that question!]]
Laity! Get your Sensus Fidelium on!
If we don't kneel now...then we can blame no priest, no bishop, nor peer pressure. The Holy Father has given that decision over to each and every layperson.
Even more than that, he doesn't just hold kneeling out as 'an option'. Rather, his daily reminder at papal liturgies, all and every! exalts kneeling as the ideal!!
The Holy Father is gently inviting us to have our bodies do what our souls already need to be doing. True, the Pope issues no fiat, no bull, no command....he gestures like a nervous teenage boy who stands with unruly slicked down hair and a 'white sportcoat' and silently extends his hand to his would-be dance partner. And for now, we refuse. We sit, like the girl who pretends not to see because she's afraid of what her smart-aleck girlfriends might say ....
This is an excellent paper on our buddies, our heroes, the Cristeros! Miss Scott makes her point: The 'Cristiada' Cristero Rebellion of the 1920s in Mexico was a lay movement. The Catholic Church officially and openly opposed it, even though the movement was dedicated to saving the Church in Mexico.
There is a theme which recurs down thru the centuries....from the common people of the 4th century who joined with Athanasius 'against the world' of Catholic bishops and kept the Church from embracing Arianism, to the English peasants of the 'Pilgrimage of Grace' who stood up for their Faith when priests and Bishops had long since surrendered ...on up to the brave Cristeros of the 1920s who saved the Church in Mexico from complete annihilation: The Church needs the laity, the 'sensus fidelium', to hold her true to her mission, to save her! Do not be discouraged when our bishops and priests are mealy-mouthed or scared or just plain traitors ---better people than we have endured this very same tragedy! And believe it, sisters and brothers.... those people intercede for us now at God's altar!
We need the clergy to get us into heaven, but God does not force them to go there with us! When our leaders wobble then we must do all the more to make the Church's mission and her saving message clear and never, ever expect a pat on the back from some well-heeled cleric.
We must only hope to hear 'well done' from ..............................One!
"“without their [ the Bishops'] permission and without their orders we are throwing ourselves into this blessed struggle for our liberty, and without their permission and without their orders we will go on until we conquer or die.”
(members of the Quintanar brigade, 1928)
Viva Cristo Rey!
k.c.
The Many Faces of the Cristero Rebellion Sonya Leigh Scott Sonya Leigh Scott, a member of Phi Alpha Theta, is a graduate student in history from Champaign, IL. She wrote this paper for Dr. José Deustua in History 5400, Latin America, during the fall of 2008. The power struggle simmering between the Catholic Church and the Mexican national government erupted with Catholic bishops and priests suspending religious worship in protest of the anticlerical policies of the Calles administration on July 31, 1926.197 President Plutarco Elias Calles called for “submission to the law,” known as Calles Law, that implemented anticlerical conditions set forth in the Constitution of 1917.198 Laws that controlled property rights in Article 27 of the Constitution forbade Church ownership of property and limited foreign ownership. All land served the public interest by the protection of communal rights of indigenous groups and redistribution of land under control of a strong national government.199 Under Calles’ Law, the government nationalized all church buildings, outlawed religious houses, banned public religious functions, and required priests to register in order to avoid severe fines or imprisonment.200 Examination of the Cristero Rebellion as simply a conflict between church and state misses the many faces, or nuances, that surrounded the uprising. In the work of historians from Jean Meyer, in the 1970s, to Ramon Jrade in the 1980s, and more recently the works of Jennie Purnell and Adrian Bantjes, reveals a multilayered portrait of the rebellion. The secular nature and the anticlerical position of the Calles administration are clear. What proves more complex, however, is how the conflict is defined. Was the rebellion a “holy war” with religious motivations? Was the conflict based in an economic struggle between a variety of peasant groups and the policies of a strong national government? Was the rebellion the culmination of long-standing grievances between the Church and the state? Or, as Purnell suggests, was the rebellion the articulation of factional conflicts between various communities that included economic, political, regional, and community concerns?201 This paper examines the complexities of the Cristero Rebellion, exploring the motivations of the many factions that emerged on both sides of the conflict and the many faces of the participants. The rebellion cannot 197 Matthew Butler, “The ‘Liberal’ Cristero: Ladislao Molina and the Cristero Rebellion in Michoacan, 1927-9.” Journal of Latin American Studies 31, no. 3 (October, 1999): 645; Jennie Purnell, Popular Movements and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico: The Agraristas and Cristeros of Michoacan (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999), 72. 198 Purnell, 76. 199 Earl Shorris, The Life and Times of Mexico (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004), 272; Purnell, 76. 200Matthew Butler, “The Church in ‘Red Mexico’: Michoacan Catholics and the Mexican Revolution, 1920-1929,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55, no. 3 (July, 2004): 530. 201 Purnell, 3. be characterized as purely a battle between two dominating forces. Like much of Mexican history, the story of the rebellion is one of continuing struggle for political, economic, and regional autonomy among a variety of groups. Indeed, the portrait of the Cristero Rebellion has many facets, each with its own interests, ideologies, hopes, and dreams. The Face of the State In 1925, Tobasco cacique Tomas Garrido Canabal criticized Catholic clerics and stated that “’the cassocked vultures have seized their prey, digging their talons into the heart of the Indian, who is less prepared than any other race to resist the seduction of the whole ritual farse.’”202 President Plutarco Elias Calles, like Canabal, believed that the power of the Church obstructed modernization and that he must eliminate the power of the Church and its domination of the peasantry.203 Calles wanted absolute control and was suspicious of the politicization of the Church after the creation of a fairly successful Catholic Party in 1912. Although the party had dissolved, Calles sought to rid Mexico of the potential for Church control. The origins of the ideology of de-fanaticization were found in radical liberalism of the nineteenth-century scientific positivism, Marxism, and Protestantism. Mexican revolutionaries understood the revolution as more than an economic struggle, but also one of spirituality. They considered religion, like many of their Russian counterparts, a “drug” and the “Catholic ritual […] a seductive trick designed to exploit ignorant peasants ‘hallucinated by floats, adorned with clouds, little angels, chalices and all the artiface the clergy uses to cheat them out of their last penny.’”204 They clerics accused of sustaining the “backwards” nature of rural peasantry and presenting an obstacle to the formation of a modern state. However, the development of a secular state was not the only motivation for Calles’ actions toward the Church. Following the February 1926 proclamation of the “primate of Mexico” in which he “repeated a 1917 declaration that the Church did not recognize the constitution,” Calles proceeded to fully implement all the provisions of the Constitution regarding the Church.205 He called for “submission to the law” that would be required anywhere and explained that this did not indicate the ‘decatholicisation’ of Mexico.206 The Church antagonized Calles who 202 Manifesto a los obreros organizados de la republica y al elemento revolucionario (Villehermosa, Tabasco, 1925), 9-10 in Adrian A. Bantjes, “Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Revolutionary Mexico: The De-Christianization Campaigns, 1929-1940.” Mexican Studies/Estidios Mexicanos 13, no. 1. (Winter, 1997): 94. 203 Butler, 520. 204Guanajuato Veccinos Moroleon, to Sec. Gob., 31 December 1934, DGG 2.347, exp. 2.347(8)15257, AGN in Bantjes, 96. 205 Butler, Church, 521. 206 Ibid. already sought its end, or at least minimizing its strong presence in Mexico. The State sought to end what they believed to be the hegemony of the Church over the Mexican people, in particular, indigenous and rural populations. In order to modernize, the secular state must rid Mexico of fanaticism and mysticism that kept the people ‘backwards’ and without a national identity. The Mexican government wanted absolute control over the social, cultural, economic, and political lives of the people, and the Church was considered a significant obstacle. The Face of the Church The Catholic Church, although present in the daily life of many Mexicans and a fixture in many rural communities, was noticeably absent from the rebellion. The majority of priests, according to Jean Meyer, were quite hostile to the cristeros. Meyer found that in January 1927, out of 3,600 priests, only five were participated in the rebellion. One hundred priests were “actively hostile,” sixty-five were neutral but provided support to the cristeros, forty were “actively favorable,” and 3,600 priests left their parishes.207 The Vatican had forbade bishops and priests aiding the insurgents and demanded that they follow the law of the land. Many feared persecution as priests had been attacked and murdered and so fled to the cities or went into hiding in the hinterlands of Mexico under the protection of their parishes.208 Mexican clerics suspended of worship on 31 July, 1926, in order to encourage private worship. This was “an attempt to put the sacraments and the clergy beyond the reach of civil law.”209 However, the “majority of clergy withdrew from rural areas and sought refuge in the big towns under the control of the Government.”210 Not only did the majority of priests withdraw from their parishes, they encouraged nonviolence, patience, and humility. According to Aurelio Acevedo, one of the cristero rebels, “the very Fathers forbade us to fight for Christ, for the religion our fathers taught us and then reaffirmed for us in baptism, confirmation and our first communion.”211 Many priests offered sermons opposing the cristeros, calling them ‘cattle-thieves’ and discouraging parishioners from participation in rebel activities.212 A few priests, such as Fr. Adolfo Arroyo, the vicar of Valparaiso, stayed with his parishioners and joined the rebellion in defense of the Church. Fr. Arroyo criticized his fellow priests and wrote, “The overwhelming majority of the bishops and priests, displaying a criminal 207 Meyer, 75. 208 Ibid. 69. 209 Butler, 531. 210 Meyer, 70. 211 Interview of Meyer with Aurelio Acevedo, in Meyer, Cristeros, 70. 212 Ibid. degree of conformism, wallowed in an accursed inertia, all expecting sheer miracle from Heaven to give liberty to the Church.” They were content to give exhortations and say a few prayers. The priests had recourse to theology and, without further consideration, announced the illicit nature of the violent struggle in defence of the Church.213 Msgr. Gonzalez y Valencia, Archbishop of Durango wrote in a pastoral letter on February 11, 1927, “We never provoked this armed movement. But now that this movements exists, and all peaceful means have been exhausted, to our Catholic sons who have risen in arms for the defence of their social and religious rights … we must say: be tranquil in your consciences and receive our blessing.”214 Because of Vatican-issued orders that bishops and priests abandon their parishes and spiritual duties, and submit to the mandates of the Constitution, priests rarely supported the rebellion. Fear of persecution and death also created a barrier to clerical support, although many priests found ways to remain with their parishioners as spiritual leaders and conduct the sacraments covertly. The face of the Church was not represented among the cristeros, only the presence of a few priests who felt they could not and would not abandon their charges. If the rebellion was a conflict between the Church and the state, the Church was missing. The Faces of the Cristeros In ideological, socioeconomic, and geographical terms, the cristeros were the most diverse of all the actors in the rebellion. They were, in other words, not engaged in a large collective action, rather the cristeros represented numerous causes and concerns, not all of which were religious. Jennie Purnell writes that “communities did not rebel en masse during the cristiada unless revolutionary anticlericalism and agrarianism attacked local resources, values, and institutions that had been successfully defended until the revolution itself.”215 In fact, the peasants were deeply divided on the issue of rebellion and their opinions reflected their economic interests, the impact of agrarian reform on their villages and towns, and their feelings toward local authorities. Although various communities and factions shared religious beliefs, there were differing political viewpoints.216 The rebellion acquired the name cristero because of the battle cry “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” and not necessarily because they shared a single view.217 213Archives of Aurelio Acevedo, notes on the religious persecution, armed defense, and agreements, by Fr. Adolfo Arroyo, MS of 8 pp., 24 January 1934, in Meyer, Cristeros, 69-70. 214 “Outside the Flaminian Gate,” pastoral letter of Msgr. Gonzalez y Valencia, 11 February 1927. Original sheet in the possession of Jean Meyer (double sheet written on recto and verso), in Meyer, Cristeros, 67. 215 Purnell, 19. 216 Ibid. 8. 217Ramon Jrade, “Inquiries into the Cristero Insurrection against the Mexican Revolution.” Latin American Research Review 20, no. 2. (1985): 54. Some cristeros engaged in rebellion for purely political and economic reasons. Ladislao Molina, a large landowner in Michoacan, did not demonstrate any religious motivation, and was known to embrace liberal ideology first, and Catholicism second.218 According to Jose Perez, a delegate to the National League for the Defence of Religious Liberty (LNDLR), writing to his superiors, “he is not a cristero: whilst he is a Catholic, he is also a liberal, and does not fight for the same reasons as the Catholics. He has his own point of view, but it is personal.”219 In the case of Molina, and most likely others like him, “Catholicism served as a dissident ideology for resisting state encroachments on his sphere of influence.”220 Some of the cristeros focused their revolutionary efforts on the local agraristas who benefited from Cardenas-era land reforms.221 Agrarian land reform created sporadic problems throughout Mexico as villages and towns lost territorial autonomy. However, the problem for the cristeros did not necessarily revolve around the agraristas, it revolved around religion with political overtones. Cristero Jose Gonzalez Romo wrote in a letter to agrarista Jesus Morfin, “Tell the agraristas that we are not fighting them because they are agraristas, but because they support the tyrant who is trying to wipe out the religion of our country and hand us over to the Protestant Gringos.”222 Government control over land distribution often meant foreign ownership and control, the previous statement suggests that some cristeros saw a connection between elimination of the Catholic Church, and the introduction of liberal, state-controlled, and foreign-based exploitation. Despite the economic and political tones of the rebellion, defense of religion still motivated many of the cristeros. Because of their commitment to Church restoration, they often defied the Church’s instruction to obey the laws and observe restraint and non-violence. In a letter to the parish priest, the Quintanar Brigade wrote, “without their permission and without their orders we are throwing ourselves into this blessed struggle for our liberty, and without their permission and without their orders we will go on until we conquer or die.”223 Many cristeros “believed they were fighting a ‘holy war’ against an anticlerical government frequently depicted as the Anti-Christ.”224 218 Butler, 645. 219 Archivo Aurelio Robles Acevedo, Mexico City, caja 20/expediente 90/foja 14117, Perez to Guerrero, Morelia, 22 February 1929, in Butler, Molina, 646. 220 Butler, 649. 221 James Krippner-Martinez, “Invoking ‘Tato Vasco’: Vasco de Quiroga, Eighteenth – Twentieth Centuries,” The Americas 56, no. 3. (January, 2000): 23. 222 Archives of the Society of Jesus, Mexican Province, 9 April 1929 in Meyer, Cristeros, 107. 223 Archives of Aurelio Acevedo; collective letter of the Quintanar Brigade to the parish priest of Mesquitic, Norberto Reyes, in Meyer, Cristeros, 71. 224 Javier Villa-Flores, “Religion, Politics, and Salvation: Latin American Millenarian Movements,” Radical History Review Issue 99 (Fall, 2007): 246. According to Javier Villa-Flores, during periods of “accelerated cultural, political, and economic change,” increased religious and spiritual participation is common.225 He suggests that the cristeros, in response to crisis, mobilized around a religious belief that served as a source of motivation.226 Alliances and grassroots defense of the Church solidified in response to the rapid changes the government attempted to impose.227 In fact, cristeros were not only found in peasant communities and rural villages, but in urban areas as well, although their character and composition were significantly different. In the cities, large urban networks formed. They engaged in clandestine operations collecting taxes for supplies, obtaining ammunition and food to sustain the rebels, and formed elaborate communication networks. Workers and artisans, along with professionals filled the urban ranks of the cristeros. Women played a critical role as cristeros. They carried messages, ammunition, obtained and delivered food, among many other duties, at great peril.228 What united the cristeros was their need to cope with and respond to government controls over every aspect of their lives. Government attacks against the Church mobilized the cristeros. The Church, in many ways, was the symbol of autonomy, of cultural identity, an institution that sustained the people through decades of turmoil. Conclusion The question remains, after this short discussion of the actors of the Cristero Rebellion, was this a conflict based on religion, or was it more a conflict between competing factions based on economic and political interests? We have seen that the Church as an institution played a very minor role, if any role at all. We have also seen that economics and local interests figured strongly in mobilizing the cristeros as in the ongoing conflict between the agraristas and the peasants. Agrarian and land reform provided much of the fuel for the cristiada. Religion served as a common denominator mobilizing the lower and middle class against the elite. Devotion to the church bound diverse antigovernment sentiments, and the government’s action against the Church and religious freedom were springboards that propelled the cristiada. In the Cristero Rebellion a variety of concerns converged, and the Church served as a symbol and catalyst for anti-government expression. The desire of the government to inflict its control over Mexican life and create a new national identity based on secular terms intensified the commitment of many Catholics to practice their religion, with or without clerical guidance or support. 225 Ibid. 243. 226 Ibid. 242. 227 Butler, 525. 228 Meyer, 95, 128-130.
Apparently the faithful are rescuing their Church from a rainbow clad Bishop Nourrichard who has had enough of the Latin Mass and ad orientem worship. He makes his triumphant entrance to expel the offending traditional priest....then something unexpected happens the people rise up.....
