For many years Mexico has thus gone along the line of reform. The ambition of the Church has been held in check but not killed. They are regaining some of their former power, and recovering much of their former property, so it is claimed by good authority.[4] The average Mexican is superstitious. He is boastful and bold in times of peace, but craven when the time of trial comes. Consequently, when sick and about to die, he will send for the priest, no matter how he may have fought the Church when in health. The priests, or some of them at least, claiming that the Catholic Church, as the chosen of the Lord, has a lien on all earthly goods, refuse to administer the sacrament without some restitution. If the dying man owns a confiscated church property, he must restore its value before he can get a clear title to a home in Heaven. With the persistence characteristic of the Mexican Catholic priests, they are ferreting out their former property and again accumulating wealth for their beloved Church. Their fees are utterly out of proportion to the earning capacity of the people. Marriage costs $14.00, baptism $2.25 and plain mass $6.00. Many of the poor peons are obliged to forego the services of the Church because of these high charges, for all services must be paid in advance.
They are also openly disregarding the established laws in some of the restrictions imposed. I travelled for two days on the railroad with the Bishop of Tehuantepec who wore his purple robes of office all the time. At nearly every station priests met him, and he was given a continuous ovation. A few months ago, according to a Mexican periodical, a well known priest, in defiance of the law which prohibits public religious processions, authorized such a procession, and blessed at the altar those who arrived with it. In many of the more remote districts the law requiring marriage ceremonies to be made by civil authorities is completely disregarded. The priests tell the people that the religious ceremony is all that is necessary. Although the Church upholds such marriages, in law they are absolutely null and void, and it is a deceit upon the contracting parties. Some priests go so far as to tell their people that the civil marriage is positively impious. And yet nothing is done to punish the above violations of the established laws. The government probably does not consider that these infractions of the strict letter of the law have reached a serious phase.
If the Roman Church of Mexico to-day, with its wealth confiscated, its public voice muzzled, its political powers annulled, has still power so that it can openly violate some of the fundamental laws of the country, we can have some faint idea of its power when it ruled the country with an iron hand. Those who see trouble ahead because of the avariciousness of some of the clergy, are fond of quoting the old Spanish proverb “The devil lurks behind the cross.” Nevertheless, I believe that the clergy in Mexico to-day are superior to those who served prior to the change in status. Many of them are noble men striving to uplift the people and aid the government in its campaign for the enlightenment of the masses. The strife has purified them and they think less of the perquisites than the duties of their office. The well meaning priest no doubt suffers for the sins of his predecessors as well as those of his contemporaries who are blinded by the past glory of the Church. The Church as an institution is probably to some extent the victim of the ignorance and fanatical zeal of its early founders in Mexico. The Church will thrive far more when placed on the same footing as all churches are in the United States, and people and priest accept that condition. As one prominent American priest has recently said in commenting on the struggle in France: “Everywhere that church and state are united, the church is in bondage. Nowhere is the church so free and untrammelled, or so progressive, as in the United States.”
The churches in all the cities are numerous and their capacity far greater than the number of those attending. Puebla, the City of the Angels, so called because of the many miraculous visits of the angels who even, on their first visit, measured off the city and fixed the site of some churches, is called the city of churches as it has the greatest number in proportion to the population of any city in the republic, many of them being erected in honour of the various angelic visitations. The City of Mexico contains the largest and most pretentious church building in the new world—the cathedral. It is also one of the largest church edifices in the world. This grand cathedral begun in 1573 was ready for service about three-quarters of a century later but the towers were not completed until 1791. It is four hundred and twenty-six feet long and almost two hundred feet wide with walls of great thickness, and reaches a height of one hundred and seventy-five feet in the dome. The towers are a little more than two hundred feet high. Then adjoining this building is another church, the Sagrario Metropolitano, which, to all appearances, is a part of the main structure, although of an entirely different and less beautiful style of architecture.
Within these two edifices were concentrated for centuries the pomp and ceremony of the Church of Rome and within their walls much of Mexico’s history was made. It is still the headquarters of the church party while across the plaza is the National Palace, the official home of the government which conquered in the long struggle between the two forces. The estimated cost of the cathedral is $2,000,000, but that represents only a fraction of the actual cost if the labour is figured at a fair rate and the material had all been purchased at market value. There are some paintings by famous artists on the walls and dome. A balustrade surrounds the choir which is made of composite metal of gold, silver and copper and is so valuable that an offer of a speculative American to replace it with one of equal weight in solid silver was refused. Within the walls there are fourteen chapels dedicated to the various saints, and candles are kept constantly burning before the images, and in these chapels are kept many gruesome relics of these same saints. The remains of many of the former viceroys and some of the other noted men in Mexican history lie buried here. This, the greatest church in the western world, is also built on the foundations of the greatest pagan temple of the continent—the imposing Teocalli of the Aztecs. From the top of the towers we can look upon the same valley that Cortez viewed when Montezuma took him by the hand after ascending the great altar, and pointed out the various places of interest. The lakes have receded, the architecture is different, but our admiring eyes see the same majestic hills on every side.
Listening to the bells in the towers of this cathedral, once so powerful, one, who is a “dreamer of dreams,” can almost imagine them lamenting the changed times in the words of the last poem written by the poet Longfellow:
“Is then the old faith dead,”
They say, “and in its stead