The execution of Blessed Miguel Pro, 11/23/27
Dear
Parishioners,
·
What sacrifices am I willing to make in order
to offer the Mass or to practice my Catholic faith freely?
·
What suffering would I be willing to endure
for my Catholic faith?
·
Would I be able
to hold fast to my Catholic faith in the face of torture
or a threat of death?
·
How much do I
value religious freedom?
·
Would I have the
courage to proclaim: “¡Viva
Cristo Rey!” like the Cristeros?
The
above questions keep haunting me. I just returned from seeing the film For Greater Glory.
When
I saw the sacrifices that the Cristeros made and the tortures that
they endured for their Catholic
faith, I was speechless with a pain deep in my heart. During a three year period (1926-1929) in
Mexico’s history, approximately 90,000
people died in what was called the Cristero
War. In an interview with Ruben Quezada, the author of For
Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada, he explains the background
to the war:
When Plutarco Calles
took over as president of Mexico, he did not want the church to be part of any
moral teachings to its citizens. He did
not want God to be a part of anyone’s life.
After the Mexican Revolution the two presidents that followed (Venustiano
Carranza and Alvaro Obregon) abused their power to wage their personal attacks
against the Catholic Church as well. There
were similar persecution incidents and abuses towards the clergy and Catholics
alike, and we have a few Mexican Martyrs from those persecutions who were not
part of the Cristero War. When President
Calles came into power, he wanted to bring Mexico’s population to belong to a
Socialist state. He would insist that
the Church was poisoning the minds of the people and that its teachings were a
threat to the Revolutionary mentality which it stood for. Calles wanted to
ensure that all citizens were going to be educated under the government’s dictatorship
and secular mindset. He wanted to ensure
that only the government would have the freedom to form the minds of its
citizens and insisted that the church was poisoning the minds of the people. In order to enforce this new law it was
necessary to expel all clergy, except for a few priests who would oversee the
spiritual needs of the people and with the supervision of the state
authorities. This led to various states
of Mexico going without a single Mass being celebrated for a long time.
A
total of 35 martyrs have been canonized and fifteen were beatified as
a result of this persecution. The motto of the Cristeros was “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long Live Christ the King!”) which so
many refused to denounce even when facing
torture and death.
Special
recognition needs to be given to the Knights of Columbus who helped the
Mexican people during this war. Again,
according to Quezada:
In
August 1926, just days after the Calles Law took effect, the U.S. Knights
passed a resolution to support the Church in Mexico. They established a fund
that raised over a million dollars to offer relief services for those exiled
from Mexico, to provide for exiled seminarians to continue their priestly
formation, and to educate the American public about the true situation. The Order printed and distributed five million
pamphlets about the Cristiada and two million copies of the Pastoral Letter of
the Catholic Episcopate of the United States on the Religious Situation in
Mexico. The U.S. Knights also sponsored
over 700 free lectures and reached millions by radio.
The
film, which only had only a very limited run in our and in most areas, is a
story of fidelity to the Catholic faith
in the face of torture and persecution.
It is a story of what people are willing to sacrifice to preserve religious freedom.
I
could never do justice to the situation in a brief column such as this. When the DVD comes out, maybe you could buy
it or rent it. (Beware of the intense
violence at times—the reason it received an “R” rating.)
It
is well worth watching!
Fr. Ed Namiotka
Pastor
