Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/39

Rh The fact is that the church has been held up before the people, since the Laws of Reform, as an influence threatening the life of the republic. It has been used as a bogey by the liberals to support their power and guard against the possibility that the clergy might return to their former position of influence among the people. For a generation and a half at least it has been unimportant as a political influence. There is no Catholic political party and even devoted Catholics have been agreed, at least until recently, that it would be inadvisable to form one. The position that has been forced upon the church by political developments has not only destroyed its political influence very largely, but has undermined its prestige. It has not been able to continue as effectively as formerly its work for the education of the Indian population nor for its real conversion. It is admitted even by enthusiastic churchmen that in the districts away from the larger cities the Indian is reached only in a formal way by educational influences and that to his religion he is attached without an understanding of any but its most simple teachings.

Nor has the church maintained its hold upon the so called upper class. Formally these too are in large majority Catholic but regular church attendance has admittedly become less general, especially among the men, a large number of whom are more or less openly agnostic.

If, however, the official figures be relied upon to give a picture of Mexican religious conditions, there is little to show that the campaign against the Catholic church by political leaders, the missionary work of Protestant