Light on Mexican Darkness
May 5, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 707 LIGHT ON MEXICAN DARKNESS social and political condition of Mexico, though relatively ignored by the general press, is a matter to which no American can be...
...and it can influence to a great extent the nature of our relationships with all Latin America...
...The religious provisions, together with the entire policy of the Calles regime toward the Catholic Church, are therefore the fated appendage to a long, intricate history of political and economic battles...
...The Mexican government solemnly pledged itself to guarantee religious liberty according to the Constitution of 1857...
...Lansing, at the direction of the United States Senate, interrogated the then provisional government of Mexico as to whether or not that government would guarantee and provide religious liberty for its people...
...We have seen the house go up in smoke, but as yet nobody has clearly pointed out who started the fire...
...declared a pre-constitutional "period...
...But it emphasizes the duty to work for the civic and social well-being of the afflicted country, and it urges the formation of a strong, helpful public opinion...
...To know and condemn them is one thing...
...But up till now the situation has aroused only a little sporadic concern...
...The articles we are printing are contributions toward this opinion...
...We feel, for instance, that the facts about foreign business activity have had their bearing upon revolutionary movements for social reform...
...The thing remaining to be done is, as we have said, the formation of a public mind sufficiently instructed about the details of the problems and adequately aroused to action...
...The United States gave recognition to Mexico on Mexico's specific promise that it would guarantee religious liberty to all its citizens...
...it will determine the economic status of a wealthy country in which we cannot avoid being commercially interested, and toward the cultural character of emigrants from which we must take a definite attitude...
...Precisely because the action of the United States has time and time again changed the natural course of Mexican development, the present condition of Mexico is something in which we are not only interested but for which we are to some extent responsible...
...Therefore The Commonweal, basing its action upon the spirit of the encyclical of the Holy Father, has opened its columns to a free discusssion of the problem...
...Mexico, as a country with a great and beautiful tradition, as a nation still fundamentally Catholic to the core, must be understood and assisted here by Catholics, if anybody is to understand and assist it...
...The appeal is directed to citizens regardless of creed...
...The Calles government is our most immediate neighbor: upon what it does may depend the fate of American citizens both north and south of the Rio Grande...
...And though that be difficult, it is not impossible...
...Mexico has not kept this agreement, but on the contrary, her government has entered upon a definite campaign of force to destroy religious liberty and is intensifying the campaign by striking at the roots of religion—religious education...
...and by military dictatorship forced, not through popular vote but through picked convention, the Constitution of 1917...
...Each writer is personally responsible for his views, and comment is invited from those who disagree...
...Apart from that, we do not endorse them individually...
...No sooner was it won than the government of Mexico scrapped the Constitution of 1857...
...The encyclical, while ordaining that no political action specifically Catholic be taken in Mexico, seems to suggest also that no similar action be taken by Catholics in the United States...
...These premises and the conclusion which follow from them are sufficiently clear...
...It summons men and women everywhere in this country to organize for the purpose of convincing the government of the United States that the rabid violations of the principle of religious liberty in Mexico are intolerable...
...Unless one realizes how the two have developed, in parallel but independently, one cannot understand either...
...They are signed by men whom experience and study have made competent to discuss the situation...
...For itself, The Commonweal is concerned primarily with two facts or circumstances...
...We are amply justified, and not only justified but, as is every American, obligated, to call upon our government therefore that its original request upon which recognition to Mexico was granted, be lived up to by the government of Mexico...
...That this energy may be developed speedily, the administrative committee of the National Catholic Welfare Conference has, during the past week, outlined a program of action...
...and we know that the Constitution of 1917, with the religious provisions which it incorporates, was recognized by the Wilson government because—and only because—the European situation made such recognition imperative...
...On that promise, our government granted recognition...
...Now the history of Mexico is one thing, and the history of the United States and Mexico is another...
...And while the case for the legitimacy of official protest will be outlined in a handbook to be issued soon, the basic argument is stated clearly enough in the following pronouncement: "The present government of Mexico won its way to power by revolution, and has been strengthened in its hold upon power by recognition by our own government of the United States...
...The first is the truth that, despite the deluge of print which has been devoted in recent years to the Mexican debacle, many aspects of the situation still remain totally dark...
...Before such recognition was granted in 1915, our Secretary of State, Mr...
...to understand their origin, and thereby to arrive at an idea of how to counteract them successfully, is another...
...and the great duty urged by the Holy Father still awaits the unselfish cooperative energy that shaU shoulder it...
...May 5, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 707 LIGHT ON MEXICAN DARKNESS social and political condition of Mexico, though relatively ignored by the general press, is a matter to which no American can be indifferent...
...The second is the unfortunate absence of an organized American Catholic opinion...
Vol. 3 • May 1926 • No. 26
