Bishops on Mexico

In Las Casas in Mexico's State of Chiapas one day last week policemen and local officials entered one by one all the city's Roman Catholic Churches. While sextons looked on in timid alarm and, in one church, a woman tried to knife an official, the police roughly stripped the niches of their saintly statues, the walls and altars of their paintings and chromos, carried them all away to destruction.

Same day in Washington most of the U. S. Catholic hierarchyP:three Cardinals, nine archbishops and 66 bishopsP:were gathered at the Catholic University of America for their annual policy meeting. Their 78 pious hearts ached with the matter of Mexico, where such doings as the Las Casas incident are currently the Church's daily lot. At the end of their three-day meeting the bishops and archbishops issued a statement of their views. They recalled that as long ago as 1926 they had issued a pastoral dealing with the century-old "war against religion" in Mexico; that later an "inadequate" agreement had been reached between Church & State in that country, but that since 1931 that agreement has been repudiated.

Pointing out that the number of priests in the Federal District has been reduced to 25 and eliminated entirely in the States of Tabasco, Zacatecas, Sonora, Chiapas, Vera Cruz, Campechi and Queretaro, the U.S. prelates charged that the churches, schools and dwellings of their Mexican fellows have been expropriated. Denied to all Catholics are the rights of free assembly, free press and free worship and to the clergy, in addition, the right of franchise and even the solace of religious life. Since foreign clergymen are outlawed and native Mexicans prohibited from studying for the priesthood, the Mexican priesthood would soon die off even if the present active persecution were not maintained. "No upholder of the rights of man," said the U.S. bishops and archbishops, "can view complacently the exercise of such tyranny, even though it be in a country other than our own. They who suffer in Mexico, they who suffer in exile, are our fellow faithful, all members of our beloved church, which is one body. The Church of our country, the Church throughout the world, suffers with the suffering Church in Mexico."

Urging the faithful to pray for an end of the persecution, the prelates did not forget U. S. Ambassador Josephus Daniels whom many a Catholic has accused of publicly giving aid and comfort to the Mexican Government (TIME, Oct. 15 et seq.). Omitting specific mention of that aging Methodist, a paragraph in the hierarchy's statement was aimed straight at him: "We cannot but deplore the expressions unwittingly offered, at times, of sympathy with and support of governments and policies which are absolutely at variance with our own American principles. They give color to the boast of the supporters of tyrannical policies, that the influence of our American Government is favorable to such policies. We do not believe, for a moment, that it is. It could not be."

Legion, Having disposed of Mexico the U. S. hierarchy turned its attention to one of its favorite domestic achievements, the Legion of Decency. Declaring that a "marked improvement" had taken place in the cinema which the Legion was supposed to clean up, the bishops and archbishops nevertheless recommended that the movement continue "as a permanent protest against everything in the moving picture which is subversive of morality." Resolved the prelates: "The campaign against the crimes and transgressions of the makers of moving pictures has been undertaken with no other purpose than to show that a clear line must be drawn between what is elevating and instructing and what is debasing and degrading."

Catholics and Protestants alike have lately been confused by a variety of contradictory lists of decent and indecent films sent out by churchmen. To coordinate the Legion's work the bishops and archbishops voted that all 108 U. S. Catholic dioceses should use one list and no other--that prepared by Chicago's George William Cardinal Mundelein.

Jubilees, Chalice. This week with much pomp Chicago's Cardinal was to celebrate his 25th anniversary as a bishop, with a solemn pontifical votive mass of thanksgiving in Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral. To Chicago were to go New York's Cardinal Hayes, Apostolic Delegate to the U.S. Amleto Giovanni Cicognani and 100 bishops.

At the Washington meeting last week were Cardinals Mundelein and Hayes and the senior Prince of the Church in the U. S., William Henry Cardinal O'Connell. The portly, 74-year-old prelate from Boston was celebrating the 50th anniversary of his ordination as priest. Catholic University gave him an LL. D. degree, President Roosevelt sent congratulations and the hierarchy in conclave presented him with a handsome gold and ivory chalice.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.