MEXICO: Facts of Life

Most Catholic prelates pursed their lips last week on the painful subject of Mexico. At El Paso, Tex., however, busy Bishop Anthony J. Schuler cried as he prepared to welcome clerics expelled across the border: “We are ready for anything from those rascals and scoundrels in the Mexican Government!”

Next day the Mexican Chamber of Deputies was informed by President Luiz Mora Tovar of the Government’s National Revolutionary Party that Catholic rascals and scoundrels in the State of Michoacan had just ambushed and killed 15 Government supporters, “the first called upon to fall while defending the ideals of the Revolution!”

The so-called “Revolution” is the established Government of Mexico. Its Six-Year Plan or Mexican New Deal will be inaugurated Dec. 1. Part of the Plan is to teach “the facts of life,” sexual, religious, political and economic in all the public schools.

What are the facts of life? If only Church and Government could agree, Mexico would be spared what looks like her ugliest crisis since Dwight W. Morrow mediated between Catholicism and the Revolution (TIME, July 8, 1929). In politics and economics the Government sees everything through pinko-Socialist glasses. It rejects religion as a fraud, holding that God does not exist. As to sex, the Government favors teaching even little boys and girls all about themselves. Last week pious parents throughout Mexico were inciting their offspring to play hooky from schools in which such things are taught.

Meanwhile State after Mexican State was swinging into line behind the move to expel Catholic clerics (TIME, Oct. 29).

Said Mexico’s Big Boss, onetime President Plutarco Elias Calles: “I regard the expulsion of archbishops and bishops as necessary. . . . They are organizing in preparation for a movement” (i. e. revolution). Back cracked Monsignor Pascual Diaz, Archbishop of Mexico, that the clergy were doing no such thing, but that Catholics must make every effort within the law “to preserve the immutable principles of justice and morality.”

With tempers taut the Government staged a grand “proletarian demonstration of Revolutionary solidarity,” sent all Government employes and a total of 200,000 Revolutionists prancing through the streets of Mexico City with catcalls for the church. Spectators beat up a policeman who tried to arrest a marcher for shouting “down with this farce of a parade! Give us bread and schools and work!” Meanwhile Government planes bombed the Capital with thousands of anti-Catholic propaganda posters, touting, among other things, the marriage of a famed ex-nun (see p. 62). “The time has come,” proclaimed President-elect Lazaro Cardenas who takes office Dec. 7, “to prepare future generations for a new life and outlook!”