Acerba Animi

The Roman Catholic Church, judging itself immutable, bides its time. For six years its episcopate in Mexico has been in bitter, almost continuous strife with Mexico's Government. Grieved with what he considers persecution and what Mexican legislators call regulation, Pope Pius XI has watched in patience, hoping for peace chiefly through the truce arranged between Church and State by the late Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow. Last week Pius XI ceased to bide, uttered a sharp protest in the stately, tremulous latinity of a Papal encyclical headed Acerba animi ("bitterness of soul").

Addressed to the Mexican hierarchy, Acerba animi flays the anti-religious propaganda, expropriation of churches, exile of clergy and suppression of religious instruction in primary schools by Mexico's National Revolutionary Party (Government). "Iniquitous" and "impious" are the laws limiting clergy, designed under the Constitution to "correspond to the religious needs of the faithful and of the locality" but actually administered to ''eliminate [the Church] gradually from the republic." Of the many State laws limiting clergy (the latest provides 24 churches and 24 priests for the million-odd inhabitants of the Federal District of Mexico City--TIME, Jan. 4). the Pope cites those of Michoacan (one priest for 33,000 faithful), Chiapas (one for 60,000) and Veracruz (one for 100,000). This "unheard-of persecution," exclaims Pius XI, "differs but little . . . from the one raging within the unhappy borders of Russia. . . ." What to do? The Holy Father counsels Mexican Catholics to obey the law but to protest unremittingly. "To approve such an iniquitous law or spontaneously to give to it true and proper co-operation is undoubtedly illicit and sacrilegious. But absolutely different is the case of him who yields to such unjust regulations solely against his will. . . . His behavior consequently is not much different from that of one who, having been robbed of his belongings, is obliged to ask his unjust despoiler for at least the use of them." In Mexico, as elsewhere, anticlericalism is tangled with politics. (In Santander last week Spain's Premier Manuel Azana told a cheering crowd that Spain is a lay state, that religious education will be abolished, a new law of religious congregations passed, and Article 26 of the Constitution, against religious orders, strictly enforced.) "Papalism" helped make bullnecked Plutarco Elias Calles Mexico's boss. Many another politician now employs it as a handy bogey. Most Mexican ladies (voteless) are pious and good. So are Mexico's straw-hatted peasants, although even Pius XI may not be sure what antique pagan notions linger in their Catholicism. But the men who run things are noisily, bombastically antireligious. Prompt and bellicose was the retort last week of Mexico's new young Provisional President Abelardo L. Rodriguez: "In an unforeseen and absurd manner there has been published the encyclical . . . whose tone does not surprise us because methods filled with falsehood against this country are characteristic of the Papacy. . . . "In answer to the open incitation made to the clergy to provoke agitation, I declare that at the slightest manifestation of disorder the Government will proceed with full energy to resolve definitely this problem, which has cost this nation so much blood and sacrifice. . . . "If the insolent, defiant attitude . . . continues, I am determined that the churches will be converted into schools and shops for the benefit of the nation's proletariat classes." Archbishop Leopoldo Ruiz y Flores, Papal Legate to Mexico, said he hoped the President "and all the enemies of the Church will be pleasantly surprised" when they read Acerba animi in full, find it pacific and patriotic.''

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