1: Articles 3, 5, 24, 27, and 130 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 as originally enacted were anticlerical and restricted religious freedoms.
1: At first the anticlerical provisions were seldom enforced, but when President Plutarco Elías Calles took office in 1924, he enforced the provisions strictly.
1: Calles’ Mexico has been characterized as an atheist state
1: and his program as being one to eradicate religion in Mexico.
1: All religions had their properties expropriated, and these became part of government wealth. There was an expulsion of foreign clergy and the seizure of Church properties.
1: Article 27 prohibited any future acquisition of such property by the churches, and prohibited religious corporations and ministers from establishing or directing primary schools.
1: This second prohibition was sometimes interpreted to mean that the Church could not give religious instruction to children within the churches on Sundays, seen as destroying the ability of Catholics to be educated in their own religion.
1: The Constitution of 1917 also forbade the existence of monastic orders (article 5) and any religious activity outside of church buildings (now owned by the government), and mandated that such religious activity would be overseen by the government (article 24).
1: On June 14, 1926, President Calles enacted anticlerical legislation known formally as The Law Reforming the Penal Code and unofficially as the Calles Law.
1: His anti-Catholic actions included outlawing religious orders, depriving the Church of property rights and depriving the clergy of civil liberties, including their right to a trial by jury (in cases involving anti-clerical laws) and the right to vote.
1: Catholic antipathy towards Calles was enhanced because of his vocal atheism.
1: He was also a Freemason.
1: Regarding this period, recent President Vicente Fox stated, "After 1917, Mexico was led by anti-Catholic Freemasons who tried to evoke the anticlerical spirit of popular indigenous President Benito Juárez of the 1880s. But the military dictators of the 1920s were a more savage lot than Juarez."
1: Due to the strict enforcement of anti-clerical laws, people in strongly Catholic areas, especially the states of Jalisco, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Colima and Michoacán, began to oppose him, and this opposition led to the Cristero War from 1926 to 1929, which was characterized by brutal atrocities on both sides. Some Cristeros applied terrorist tactics, while the Mexican government persecuted the clergy, killing suspected Cristeros and supporters and often retaliating against innocent individuals.
1: On May 28, 1926, Calles was awarded a medal of merit from the head of Mexico's Scottish rite of Freemasonry for his actions against the Catholics.
1: A truce was negotiated with the assistance of U.S. Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow.
1: Calles, however, did not abide by the terms of the truce – in violation of its terms, he had approximately 500 Cristero leaders and 5,000 other Cristeros shot, frequently in their homes in front of their spouses and children.
1: Particularly offensive to Catholics after the supposed truce was Calles' insistence on a complete state monopoly on education, suppressing all Catholic education and introducing "socialist" education in its place: "We must enter and take possession of the mind of childhood, the mind of youth.".
1: The persecution continued as Calles maintained control under his Maximato and did not relent until 1940, when President Manuel Ávila Camacho, a believing Catholic, took office.
1: This attempt to indoctrinate the youth in atheism was begun in 1934 by amending Article 3 to the Mexican Constitution to eradicate religion by mandating "socialist education", which "in addition to removing all religious doctrine" would "combat fanaticism and prejudices", "build[ing] in the youth a rational and exact concept of the universe and of social life".
1: In 1946 this "socialist education" was removed from the constitution and the document returned to the less egregious generalized secular education. The effects of the war on the Church were profound. Between 1926 and 1934 at least 40 priests were killed.
1: Where there were 4,500 priests operating within the country before the rebellion, in 1934 there were only 334 priests licensed by the government to serve fifteen million people, the rest having been eliminated by emigration, expulsion, and assassination.
1: By 1935, 17 states had no priest at all.
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1: State promotion of atheism as a public norm first came to prominence in Revolutionary France (1789–1799). [1]
2: Historian Gavin Hyman argues the "French Revolution made atheism officially respectable in France," He adds that the hostile reaction to the Revolution in Britain had the opposite effect. [2]
3: A campaign of dechristianization happened which included removal and destruction of religious objects from places of worship and the transformation of churches into "Temples of the Goddess of Reason", culminating in a celebration of Reason in Notre Dame Cathedral. [3]
4: One of the leaders of the Terror was Maximilien Robespierre; he did believe in a Supreme Being and he strongly opposed atheism. He accused the dechristianizers "under pretense of destroying superstition ... [of making] a kind of religion of atheism itself." [4]
5: According to French historian Michel Vovelle, the Cult of Reason first appeared during the trial of Marie Antoinette, but took off after the execution of Antoinette. [5]
6: The Cult of Reason was founded by Jacques Hébert and his followers. The Cult of Reason was the first official state sponsored, civic, and atheistic religion of the French Republic from October 1793 until March 1794. The Cult of Reason became popular among intellectuals and sans culottes alike. From mid-1793 the Jacobin-dominated French Convention gave tacit approval to the Cult of Reason. On 6 October 1793, the National Convention replaced the Gregorian calendar for the French Republican Calendar for France. Together with Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, Joseph Fouché, in the Nièvre department, Fouché ransacked churches, sent their valuables to the treasury, and ordered the words "Death is an eternal sleep" to be inscribed over the gates to cemeteries. [6]
7: On 10 November 1793, the Festival of Reason was held in the Notre-Dame de Paris, a newly converted Temple of Reason. [7]
8: Historian Gavin Flood says, "During the French Revolution in 1793 the Gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was rededicated to the Cult of Reason, an atheistic doctrine intended to replace Christianity." [8]
9: The Cult of Reason vanished quickly, after its chief exponents, Jacques Hébert and his followers were guillotined on 24 March 1794. [9] [7]
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1: Articles 3, 5, 24, 27, and 130 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 as originally enacted were anticlerical and restricted religious freedoms.
1: At first the anticlerical provisions were seldom enforced, but when President Plutarco Elías Calles took office in 1924, he enforced the provisions strictly.
1: Calles’ Mexico has been characterized as an atheist state
1: and his program as being one to eradicate religion in Mexico.
1: All religions had their properties expropriated, and these became part of government wealth. There was an expulsion of foreign clergy and the seizure of Church properties.
1: Article 27 prohibited any future acquisition of such property by the churches, and prohibited religious corporations and ministers from establishing or directing primary schools.
1: This second prohibition was sometimes interpreted to mean that the Church could not give religious instruction to children within the churches on Sundays, seen as destroying the ability of Catholics to be educated in their own religion.
1: The Constitution of 1917 also forbade the existence of monastic orders (article 5) and any religious activity outside of church buildings (now owned by the government), and mandated that such religious activity would be overseen by the government (article 24).
1: On June 14, 1926, President Calles enacted anticlerical legislation known formally as The Law Reforming the Penal Code and unofficially as the Calles Law.
1: His anti-Catholic actions included outlawing religious orders, depriving the Church of property rights and depriving the clergy of civil liberties, including their right to a trial by jury (in cases involving anti-clerical laws) and the right to vote.
1: Catholic antipathy towards Calles was enhanced because of his vocal atheism.
1: He was also a Freemason.
1: Regarding this period, recent President Vicente Fox stated, "After 1917, Mexico was led by anti-Catholic Freemasons who tried to evoke the anticlerical spirit of popular indigenous President Benito Juárez of the 1880s. But the military dictators of the 1920s were a more savage lot than Juarez."
1: Due to the strict enforcement of anti-clerical laws, people in strongly Catholic areas, especially the states of Jalisco, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Colima and Michoacán, began to oppose him, and this opposition led to the Cristero War from 1926 to 1929, which was characterized by brutal atrocities on both sides. Some Cristeros applied terrorist tactics, while the Mexican government persecuted the clergy, killing suspected Cristeros and supporters and often retaliating against innocent individuals.
1: On May 28, 1926, Calles was awarded a medal of merit from the head of Mexico's Scottish rite of Freemasonry for his actions against the Catholics.
1: A truce was negotiated with the assistance of U.S. Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow.
1: Calles, however, did not abide by the terms of the truce – in violation of its terms, he had approximately 500 Cristero leaders and 5,000 other Cristeros shot, frequently in their homes in front of their spouses and children.
1: Particularly offensive to Catholics after the supposed truce was Calles' insistence on a complete state monopoly on education, suppressing all Catholic education and introducing "socialist" education in its place: "We must enter and take possession of the mind of childhood, the mind of youth.".
1: The persecution continued as Calles maintained control under his Maximato and did not relent until 1940, when President Manuel Ávila Camacho, a believing Catholic, took office.
1: This attempt to indoctrinate the youth in atheism was begun in 1934 by amending Article 3 to the Mexican Constitution to eradicate religion by mandating "socialist education", which "in addition to removing all religious doctrine" would "combat fanaticism and prejudices", "build[ing] in the youth a rational and exact concept of the universe and of social life".
1: In 1946 this "socialist education" was removed from the constitution and the document returned to the less egregious generalized secular education. The effects of the war on the Church were profound. Between 1926 and 1934 at least 40 priests were killed.
1: Where there were 4,500 priests operating within the country before the rebellion, in 1934 there were only 334 priests licensed by the government to serve fifteen million people, the rest having been eliminated by emigration, expulsion, and assassination.
1: By 1935, 17 states had no priest at all.
Sources
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---|
|
1: State promotion of atheism as a public norm first came to prominence in Revolutionary France (1789–1799). [1]
2: Historian Gavin Hyman argues the "French Revolution made atheism officially respectable in France," He adds that the hostile reaction to the Revolution in Britain had the opposite effect. [2]
3: A campaign of dechristianization happened which included removal and destruction of religious objects from places of worship and the transformation of churches into "Temples of the Goddess of Reason", culminating in a celebration of Reason in Notre Dame Cathedral. [3]
4: One of the leaders of the Terror was Maximilien Robespierre; he did believe in a Supreme Being and he strongly opposed atheism. He accused the dechristianizers "under pretense of destroying superstition ... [of making] a kind of religion of atheism itself." [4]
5: According to French historian Michel Vovelle, the Cult of Reason first appeared during the trial of Marie Antoinette, but took off after the execution of Antoinette. [5]
6: The Cult of Reason was founded by Jacques Hébert and his followers. The Cult of Reason was the first official state sponsored, civic, and atheistic religion of the French Republic from October 1793 until March 1794. The Cult of Reason became popular among intellectuals and sans culottes alike. From mid-1793 the Jacobin-dominated French Convention gave tacit approval to the Cult of Reason. On 6 October 1793, the National Convention replaced the Gregorian calendar for the French Republican Calendar for France. Together with Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, Joseph Fouché, in the Nièvre department, Fouché ransacked churches, sent their valuables to the treasury, and ordered the words "Death is an eternal sleep" to be inscribed over the gates to cemeteries. [6]
7: On 10 November 1793, the Festival of Reason was held in the Notre-Dame de Paris, a newly converted Temple of Reason. [7]
8: Historian Gavin Flood says, "During the French Revolution in 1793 the Gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was rededicated to the Cult of Reason, an atheistic doctrine intended to replace Christianity." [8]
9: The Cult of Reason vanished quickly, after its chief exponents, Jacques Hébert and his followers were guillotined on 24 March 1794. [9] [7]
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