Decree

For three score years and nine Mexican patriots have scanned occasionally the Constitution of 1857, militantly transfused into the new Constitution of 1917, and wondered if Mexico would ever be strong enough to enforce the anti-foreign clauses of those highly pan-Mexican documents.

President Calles has deemed Mexico potent enough to defy the foreigner at last. He secured passage for bills enforcing the anti-foreign land and oil exploitation clauses of the Constitution of 1917, as the present year opened (TIME, Jan. 25). He ordered the expulsion of all foreign clerics (TIME, Feb. 22), relying for authority simply on the anti-religious clauses of the Constitution.

Since then the deportation of priests and nuns from Mexico has proceeded steadily (TIME, March 1, 15; April 12, 19). Recently this somewhat arbitrary procedure, undefined or circumscribed by enforcement statutes, was more exactly legalized by their addition.

Provisions of a presidential decree promulgated to take effect on July 31: 1) Church property to be confiscated. 2) No foreign-born clergymen may officiate in Mexico. 3) No religious corporation may conduct an educational institution. 4) Monasteries and nunneries are dissolved. 5) No religious publication may publish any account of or comment on national political affairs. 6) There can be no religious instruction in schools. 7) Religious ministers shall not be able to associate themselves for political purposes. 8) All religious acts of public worship shall be celebrated absolutely inside of churches which shall always be under the vigilance of the authorities. 9) There shall be no trial by jury.

The Mexican Government commented: ". . . It is the purpose of the Mexican Government to keep the Catholic Church outside politics."

Monks, nuns, foreign-born prelates disconsolately look for redemption to the special prayer ordained by the indignant Holy See set for Aug. 1 (the festival of "St. Peter-in-chains").

Trains and mules last week carried a sorry parade of downcast Catholics to Vera Cruz.