Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 458-471). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

This dissertation examines the Catholic Church’s response to the mid-nineteenth century Mexican liberal Reforma through a study of the life and work of Bishop Clemente de Jesús Munguía (1810-1868), one of the most influential yet least-known ecclesiastical intellectuals of the period. A lawyer by profession, Clemente Munguía was first professor and then rector of the Morelia diocesan seminary, where he undertook a major reform of the school’s curriculum and also composed several textbooks on a variety of subjects, including grammar, literature, rhetoric, philosophy, theology, and law. Appointed Bishop of Michoacán in October 1850, Munguía distinguished himself for his staunch opposition to the state’s encroachment on the Church, as well as for his insistence on the need for religious intolerance in what he imagined as an “exclusively Catholic” nation. His protests against the 1857 Constitution and the liberal legislation enacted by President Ignacio Comonfort were a key factor in the outbreak of the Civil War of the Reform (1858-1860) and the subsequent French intervention (1862-1867), which resulted in the separation of Church and state and the collapse of Mexican conservatism. Unlike previous studies, this dissertation argues that Bishop Munguía’s opposition to the Reforma derived not from a blind “reactionary” intransigence, but instead from his desire to emancipate the Church from the subordinate status it had under the colonial ancien régime. Far from the stereotype of a backward and parochial intellectual, Munguía was a sophisticated scholar who sought to reconcile Catholicism with the larger currents of thought of the Atlantic Republic of letters. Indeed, he believed that the liberal revolution should be countered “with its own weapons,” a conviction which first led him to frame the defense of ecclesiastical prerogatives in the language of modern natural law, and then to claim for the Church the very power of constitutional interpretation. Although Munguía’s ideal of a “Catholic republic” became unfeasible after the liberals’ final victory in 1867, his efforts at consolidating ecclesiastical independence paved the way for both the Romanization and the social activism that characterized the Mexican Church during the latter half of the nineteenth century. / text

This dissertation presents an overview of Church- State relations in Mexico from 1924 to 1938. It examines the actions and motives of prominent national leaders, the papacy, the episcopate, and the Mexican citizenry to determine justification and culpability. This dissertation presents several conclusions. When Calles enforced the anticlerical provisions of the Constitution of 1917, the clergy withdrew from the churches in protest. The episcopate as a body bore a moral responsibility for the Cristero rebellion that resulted, but avoided implication in the movement. Because the Church's supporters were in the minority, that institution in 1929 accepted a settlement requiring clerical obedience to the constitution. Churchmen consoled their parishioners with the thought that the Church would rise again.

In the one-hundred years between 1810 and 1926 there were many civil wars in Mexico. The last of these wars. La Cristiada, was not fought, as were the previous civil wars, by groups seeking political control of Mexico. Rather, the genesis of this war was a question of who would control the Church in Mexico. The war began when President Plutarco Elias Calles attempted to enforce rigorously certain articles of the Constitution of 1917 as well as two laws which he promulgated. If Calles had succeeded, he would, in fact, have created a church in Mexico controlled by the federal government. The material to support this thesis was taken largely from the Mexican legal documents, the writing of Calles, other sources contemporary with the events described and some secondary sources. This thesis stresses the religious reasons for the La Cristiada and discusses the war itself not at all.

This thesis explored a regional comparison of education in post-revolutionary Mexico. It involved a micro-look into the relationship between violence, education, religion, and politics in the states of Durango and Jalisco. Research methods included primary sources and microfilms from the National Archives State Department records related to education from the internal affairs of Mexico from 1930-1939 from collection file M1370. It also utilized G-2 United States Military Intelligence reports as well as records from the British National Archives dealing with church and state relations in Mexico from 1920-1939. Anti - clericalism in the 1920’s led to violent backlash in rural regions of Durango and Jalisco called the Cristero rebellion. A second phase of the Cristero rebellion began in the 1930s, which was aimed at ending state-led revolutionary secular education and preserving the folk Catholic education system. There existed a unique ritualized culture of violence for both states. Violence against state-led revolutionary secular educators was prevalent at the primary and secondary education levels in Durango and Jalisco. Priests served as both religious leaders and rebel activists. At the higher education level there existed a split of the University of Guadalajara but no violence against educators. There existed four competing factions involved in this intellectual battle: communists followed Marx, anarchistic autonomous communists, urban folk modern Catholics, and student groups who sought reunion of the original university. This thesis described how these two states and how they experienced their unique culture of violence during the 1930s. It suggested a new chronology of the Cristero rebellion. This comparison between two regions within the broader context of the country and its experiences during the 1930s allowed for analysis in regards to education, rebellion, religion, and politics.