"Ossy, Ossy, Boneheads"

The generalissimo of Mexico's war on the Catholic Church, Boss Plutarco Elias Calles, was last week in a Los Angeles hospital recovering from an operation on his gall bladder. The leader of the Church's counterattack, fat, sloe-eyed Archbishop Pascual Diaz, sat grimly in the Archiepiscopal Palace in Mexico City. While the Government persecuted his flock, the Primate of All Mexico, who is a pure Jalisco Indian, held in reserve one dread (to Catholics) weapon, the awful word of excommunication, which he may pronounce, the Pope may confirm.

"By the authority of the Almighty Father, of the Son, of the Holy Ghost, by the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints," goes the formula of the excommunication, "forced by the pressure of his contumacy, we excommunicate him with these words, and we proclaim him to be avoided until he shall have fulfilled that which is ordered so his soul may be saved on the Day of Judgment." Last week Archbishop Diaz brandished this monstrous threat at Mexican traitors to the Church. He declared liable to excommunication:

1) Catholic Government employes who, as members of the National Revolutionary Party, sign documents denying the truth of revealed religion.

2) Catholic parents who send their children to the Government's socialistic, anti-religious schools.

3) Catholic children who go to such schools.

4) Catholics who teach in such schools.

5) Catholics who read or listen, even by radio, to anything attacking "dogma and morality."

6) Catholics who countenance in any way the Government's side in the war.

This sounded as if most of Mexico's Catholic population were in danger of being excommunicated but in fact no Mexican was last week excommunicated and avoided. To any such high threat of absolute wrath, the Church adds a sober, realistic rider. Last week Archbishop Diaz pardoned in advance Government employes who keep their jobs because they cannot find other work, parents who send their children to proscribed schools because the truant officer forces them to. The Church wants loyal Catholics but even more it wants live Catholics.

Even in this modified form, the threat of excommunication was enough to scare a good many pious members of the atheistic National Revolutionary Party. In the Chamber of Deputies next day several arose to condemn anti-Catholic extremists headed by Minister of Agriculture Tomas Garrido Canabal. The more pious of Boss Calles' underlings promptly resolved that the Government's program be carried out "without harming or trying to offend the religious beliefs of the people."

This was plainly impossible as President Lazaro Cardenas, another pure-blooded Indian, promptly pointed out. The Government, he told newshawks, was not persecuting anybody because of his religion. It was only enforcing the laws against the Church.

From the sidelines in San Antonio, Tex., a broadside called Frente a Frente ("Face to Face")* last week let loose an inkpot of rage against Boss Calles and his henchman Aaron Saenz, Governor of Mexico's Federal District. Its cover was a foot-and-a-half high cartoon of Calles as a redhanded, man-eating gorilla, slavering across a field of skulls (see cut). Its prose, however, was no match for this pictorial violence. One article printed in groping English described a government that could ban the word "God" from the textbooks as "such ossy, ossy, phally, prehistoric boneheads. ... I verely say to all that such men as these should be locked in the insane asylum." Another addressed itself to U. S. bankers, college presidents. Senators, Governors and Mayors who have in times past visited Mexico City, been received by Governor Saenz, feted and presented with a souvenir sombrero made with pure silver. "If any of you," Frente a Frente wound up, "have been presented with one of these pure silver 'charro sombreros' and take pride in showing it to your friends as the most wonderful souvenir from old romantic Mexico, maybe after reading this article you will not be so proud of that PIECE OF SILVER. The silver in that sombrero is BLOOD MONEY because it was acquired by Aaron Saenz and by Calles . . . with the price of bread taken from the mouths of thousands of poor Mexican families. . . ."

* Published weekly by two young Mexicans, graduates of the University of Texas. The whole staff lives in a cheap boarding house in San Antonio, claims expenses are paid by voluntary contributions, mostly from Mexico.

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