FOXY CATHOLIC : The church in Mexico - President Vicente Fox's unexpected marriage, and the reaction of the Catholic Church - Brief Article

Commonweal, Sept 28, 2001 by George Grayson

Spain's President Jose Maria Aznar greeted the Mexican press corps shortly after 9 a.m. on July 2. He began by extending "triple congratulations" to his host Vicente Fox--on the first anniversary of Fox's electoral victory over the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), on his fifty-ninth birthday, and on his marriage earlier in the morning to Marta Sahagun, his press spokesperson and companion.

News of those nuptials jolted Mexico's Roman Catholic hierarchy because neither Fox nor Sahagun had had previous marriages annulled. Mexico City's Cardinal Archbishop Norberto Rivera Carrera denied that the couple would be excommunicated, but said they could not take the sacraments. Guadalajara's Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez, the Mexican cleric closest to John Paul II, was more critical. He voiced sadness for the president's "irregular, sinful situation," which set a "bad example" for Mexico's 101 million inhabitants, 85 to 90 percent of whom are Catholic.

A cloud still hangs over Fox-church relations as the reform-minded president prepares to visit the pope in early October, and the controversy affords an opportunity to ask several questions: What is the recent church-state record in Mexico? Who are powerful players in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and what role did they play in Fox's election? How have Fox's ties with the church evolved?

Victors in the 1910-16 Mexican revolution savaged the church for its close association with ousted dictator Porfirio Diaz. In debates leading to the 1917 Constitution, General Francisco Mujica denounced priests as "vampires" and "vultures." He and fellow Jacobins outlawed church involvement in elementary schools, declared marriages to be civil contracts, barred religious publications from commenting on politics, and severely restricted the church's property and legal rights.

Though these prohibitions remained on the books until 1992, a modus vivendi with the church followed the bloody 1927-29 Cristero rebellion that pitted the army against Catholic militants in central Mexico. In return for the church's recognition of the revolutionary regime, PRI presidents winked at proscribed religious practices, allowing the church gradually to move back into education, reopen sanctuaries and seminaries, and acquire property through wealthy laymen.

Although the church has failed to obtain its own radio and TV stations, lay organizations have opened at least five television channels to the broadcast of Masses, Bible readings, and other religous programs. The church-state rapprochement also included the unpublicized administration of sacraments to prominent ruling-party politicians and their families. In some ways, the church had the best of both worlds: it staved off legal sanctions while enjoying a much better public image than "corrupt" politicians and the PRI.

Archbishop Jeronimo Prigione, who arrived in Mexico as papal nuncio in 1978, was determined to codify the church's informal advances. The veteran diplomat courted PRI notables, forging such a strong bond with then-President Carlos Salinas that the latter authorized a direct phone line between Los Pinos, the Mexican president's residence, and Prigione's office. The nuncio's cultivation of influential politicians paved the way for the modification of the Constitution's anticlerical provisions and the renewal of diplomatic links between Mexico and the Vatican in 1992.

Even as the adroit Prigione wined and dined top officials, he helped promote a conservative group of bishops. Members of the so-called "Club of Rome" took their cues from the Holy See, ran their dioceses in a top-down fashion, cozied up to Mexico's business elite, and used their contacts to combat the legalization of abortion, gain access to the media, slow Protestant advances, and kibitz on social and economic policy. Prominent in this informal fraternity were Rivera, Sandoval, Bishop Onesimo Cepeda Silva of Ecatepec, and Yucatan's Bishop Emilio Berlie Belaunzaran.

On questions of social activism, the Club of Rome was contemptuous of Mexico's ever-shrinking number of liberation theologians. The Club's nemesis was Samuel Ruiz Garcia, bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas. Don Samuel had stridently defended indigenous peoples, demanded that they be granted municipal autonomy and broader political rights, deplored the self-serving politicians and affluent landowners who exploited them, and provided an environment congenial to the Zapatista rebels who sparked a short-lived uprising in early 1994.

Before Ruiz retired in 2000, the Vatican placed a bishop coadjutor in his diocese. But much to Rome's dismay, newcomer Raul Vera Lopez cast his lot with the outspoken Ruiz Garcia. Even though Vera Lopez was transferred to Saltillo, he and Ruiz Garcia continue to champion indigenous rights.

The official Mexican Episcopal Conference (CEM) occupies the middle of the Catholic spectrum. Headed by Bishops Luis Morales Reyes (San Luis Potosi), Jose Martin Rabago (Leon), and Abelardo Alvarado (Mexico City), these moderates constitute the biggest bloc among Mexico's ninety-five bishops. As such, they resist being manipulated by the Vatican and demonstrate a keen sense of nationalism. For example, even though Ruiz Garcia was too radical for the tastes of most of the country's bishops, they rallied to his defense when Prigione and his allies attempted to oust him.