Catholics v. Evang

Catholics v. Evangelicos

What happens in the tiny Mexican village of San Felipe de Santiago Yeche, few outsiders have ever known or cared. But when the fanatically Catholic Indians of Santiago Yeche expressed disapproval of two Protestant missionaries by murdering them, Bishop David Ruesga of the Protestant Church of God protested to Mexico City. Two special federal officers--Marcelo Fernandez Ocana and Leopoldo Arenas--went to the village.

Exactly what happened when they first got there is still a question. According to one account: the secretary of the municipal president said, "Those are the sons of bitches we are waiting for!" and ordered the church bells to sound a tocsin. Within a few minutes the federal officers were being stoned and beaten. Arenas played dead, escaped. Ocana was killed.

Violence & Faith. To affable, middle-aged Protestant Bishop Ruesga the incident was just an incident in the continuous, often violent conflict between Mexico's 20,000,000 Catholics and 180,000 Protestants. To the Catholic Archbishop of Mexico, Luis Maria Martinez, the tragedy at Santiago Yeche deserved Christian condemnation. Said he: "The Catholic faith is defended and extended through prayer, instruction and good example. . . . The Christian spirit is the spirit of charity, and charity is sweet and prudent."

Bishop Ruesga's own church in Calzada de Guadalupe, a starkly simple building in a land where churchly magnificence rules, is in plain sight of the famed Church of the Virgin of Guadalupe, chief shrine of Mexican Catholicism. The church's few small stained-glass windows are protected by chicken wire from rocks hurled by passing Catholics. Its fac,ade is always mud-spattered. Once an attempt was made to burn the building.

Bearers of the Word. In the rear of his church Bishop Ruesga trains a small class of earnest young Indians to become evangelicos--Protestant teachers. His Church of God, though one of Mexico's smaller Protestant sects, is noted for its missionary zeal.

Most important activity of the leading Protestant groups in Mexico (Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists) is teaching the Mexicans to read and distributing copies of the Bible at minimum cost. Catholics are not pleased with the fact that Indians can buy a well-made Protestant Bible for 6 1/2 pesos ($1.35), while the cheapest Catholic Bible costs 22 pesos.

To Protestants the Bible is a primer in educational work. Said one missionary: "We prefer to teach [the Indians], to let them become aware of the world outside and of the Book of God without forcing it upon them." But Catholics, men like Bishop Ruesga argue, oppose not only the placing of the Bible in Indian hands, but education itself, fearing that knowledge will lead the Indians away from, the Church of Rome.

Mexican Catholic clergy tend to view the weak Protestant competition as a U.S. plot for domination of Mexico, financed by lavish quantities of gringo gold. Said one priest last week: Protestant missionaries, who have been dispensing medicine, clothing, etc., are like the British missionaries in Ireland during the famine of 1847 who bought Catholic souls, with soup. They are all metiches -- people who stick their noses into other people's business. "In the U.S. you have 80 million people who profess no religion at all. If the Protestants want to save souls, why don't they do it in the U.S. instead of Mexico, which has been solidly Catholic for 400 years?"-

*The solidity of Mexican Catholicism is debatable. Under the constitution of 1917 the church was disestablished, and in the years following the measures subjecting the church to strict Government control were enforced to the point of persecution. The wearing of clerical garb in public was banned, is still forbidden.

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