p. 346 | THE RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITION OF MEXICO

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 2, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 22.

THE RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITION OF MEXICO.

By Samuel P. Craver, D.D.

MANY Christian people question the propriety or the necessity of sending missionaries to Roman Catholic countries. Believing, as they do, that Roman Catholicism is a legitimate part of Christianity, they suppose that any people fully under the influence and control of that religion must, of course, possess the gospel in such a way as not to require evangelistic labor.

It is the object of this article to give a glimpse at the real condition of the Mexicans in their religious and moral life, in order to furnish the readers of this journal an opportunity to judge for themselves concerning the need of missionary effort in the land of the Aztecs.

For three and a half centuries the Mexicans were wholly subject to the Roman Catholic religion, and all that they are is more fully the result of that religion than of any other single factor. No people has been more thoroughly subject to the teachings and will of the priests than the Mexicans, and none furnish a better example of what Rome can do for a nation that accepts her doctrines and practices.

If Protestant civilization is to be judged according to its fruits, as seen in the United States, where the vast majority of the people are Protestants, then Roman Catholicism must be judged by its fruitage in Mexico, where the whole population was subject to that religion for more than three hundred years.

The Characteristics of Their Religion.

The Roman Catholic religion in Mexico is thoroughly idolatrous. I do not mean by this that the people worship the saints in heaven, though Protestants would regard this as idolatry, but that they render divine worship to material idols. No heathen prays more truly to his stone or bronze divinity than does the Mexican to his wooden or paper figure of a saint. The average Roman Catholic of Mexico does not look or think beyond the material image to the saint it is supposed to represent, nor to God, to whom, theoretically, the saint in heaven is supposed to present the prayer of the supplicant. The prayer is addressed to the image itself. In proof of this I present the following facts:—

1. The people make a great distinction between different images of the same saint. All the different virgins, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Virgin of Lourdes, the Virgin of Sorrows, the Virgin of Remedies, etc., are supposed to be the Virgin Mary, who certainly is not many, but one single saint. Yet some of these representations of her are believed to be much more potent than others. Still more, some special images of any one of these different "advocations" are regarded as far greater miracle workers than other images of the same kind. Historically some of these images have been arrayed against each other in battle, as was the case when, in the war for independence, the Virgin of Guadalupe was the protectress and patron saint of the Mexicans, and the Virgin of Remedies performed the same office for the Spaniards, each leading her respective army upon the field of battle until final victory perched upon the banner of the Guadalupan Virgin.

2. The worshippers themselves confess that they adore the image, often believing that the wooden statue is of flesh and blood, and that they can see it smile or frown upon them in their prayers. The almost uniform testimony of those who have been converted to Protestantism—and they are thousands—is that they never thought beyond the visible object.

3. The priests also recognize and confess that the masses of the people are the worshipers of the material images. A few years since the Bishop of Queretaro published a pastoral letter in which he endeavored to persuade the faithful of that city to transfer their chief adoration from the Virgen del Pueblo (a little image of the Virgin Mary, supposed to have appeared on a hill near Queretaro) to the Virgen de Guadalupe, which is another image of the same Mary, supposed to have been miraculously painted on the tilma, or blanket, of a poor Indian, near Mexico City. There is no question whatever as to the fact of the crude idolatry of the masses and the refined idolatry of the higher classes of Roman Catholics in Mexico, as, in addition to the image worship of the former, all of them give divine worship to the consecrated wafer, believing it to be the very God of heaven.

Again, the Roman Catholic religion in Mexico is antichristian. Let it not be understood that Christ is not recognized in that religion. He is nominally held up as the Redeemer of the world, and all the more important scenes in his life are presented to the people in pantomime during the course of the year. Especially are the principal events connected with his birth and death reënacted in a literal way before the people, so that without the Bible they come to know the leading facts about Christ's life. But he is not presented to them as their Saviour. His work was only partial, and Mary, the saints, and the priests are so presented as to really eclipse Christ. At most, the sufferings of the Saviour only expiated a part of the penalty for sin, and the administration of that pertains to the priests, while for the rest the sinner himself must atone by his own merits. This atonement he may make by means of the multifarious penances and "holy exercises" that are prescribed by the spiritual physician, the father confessor, or, in default of these, he must suffer the material flames of purgatory for an indefinite period. The zeal with which extremely cruel penances are executed, such as walking upon the bare knees over stony pavements, or severe self-flagellation upon the naked body with iron or wire-wrapped scourges, proves the sincerity of the faith and the earnest desire for salvation on the part of the faithful Romanist. The persistence of many of these devoted ones in the practice of known and scandalous sins shows how utterly useless is the system of penances even as a temporal expedient. Nevertheless, it stands as a witness that the religion which

inculcates it is antichristian, since it makes the sinner his own saviour through personal suffering.

The thought of untold suffering in purgatory is distasteful to the average man, though the majority of people are disposed to take chances there rather than endure the severe penances of the present life. To accommodate all her dear children the Roman Catholic Church has invented a way of escape from purgatory by means of indulgences. These are not direct permits to sin, but are a species of rebate from the time that one must stay in purgatorial fires. These indulgences may be gained in a multitude of ways by the faithful, and may be applied not only to their own account, but also that of others already suffering in that purifying furnace. But here, again, human merit is the final ground of salvation, and not Christ.

Once again, the Roman Catholic religion in Mexico exalts the priest above God. The whole genius of that religion tends to the exaltation of the human instead of the divine. This begins in the doctrine of salvation by works, manifests itself in saint worship, which culminates in the supremacy of Mary over all saints and angels, and has for its goal the elevation of the priest to an importance unequaled in the universe. The standard works of Liguori, approved by the highest authority in the church, declare that the priest is not only superior to the Virgin Mary, in that while she brought forth Christ but once, the priest, in the eucharist, brings him forth many times, but that he is superior to God himself, inasmuch as in this same eucharist "he creates God," and God becomes subject to the priest's will. This is not theory only, but is so taught practically that the multitudes stand in awe of the padrecito a hundredfold more than they do of God. Indeed, he so stands in the place of God that with the "faithful" it matters not what God may say if they have the absolution of the priest, even when they know that priest to be a vile criminal. The priest is the necessary administrator of the sacraments, and these work by their own power, irrespective of the character of the administrator, so that every man's salvation is in the hands of the priests, since no one can be saved without the sacraments, according to Roman Catholic doctrine.

The mass of superstitious beliefs and practices growing out of the foregoing characteristics of Mexican Romanism could not be told in volumes.