Regulars were supposed to hand over their ministries in Indian parishes to secular priests ASAP, but they held on as long as they could, in some cases clear through the colonial regime. Conversely, seculars were supposed to take over the ministry of Indian parishes ASAP, but since they were essentially ordinary Spaniards who happened to work for the Church, they tended to stay where other Spaniards staid and to avoid places other Spaniards avoided. As a result, the more distant parishes were relegated to the friars for centuries. If the official church is multifaceted and confusing, the lay church is even more so. One reason for this is the fact that religion suffuses all aspects of life.
Family is defined by marriage, baptism, and religiously enforced concepts of kinship.
Beyond these ties, there are any number of local religious specialists who preside over such critically important aspects of daily life as healing, propitiating spirits that might guarantee good crops, praying over the dead, etc., and who generally do so outside of the purview of any member of the official clergy. In Spanish, the parents of the child and the godparents call each other compadre and comadre . But in the Indies, and particularly among indigenous people, it blossomed. In Mexico or Peru you can become someone's compadre by sponsoring any of a number of religious and quasi-religious rites, from their child's baptism or marriage to taking one of their religious images to the priest to have it blessed. There is a local, lay religious hierarchy.