page_title: History of the Catholic Church in Mexico
section_title: The clergy and Mexican independence 1810–1821
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Catholic Church in Mexico / Spanish Bourbon Era 1700–1821 / The clergy and Mexican independence 1810–1821
context_page_description: The history of the Catholic Church in Mexico dates from the period of the Spanish conquest and has continued as an institution in Mexico into the twenty-first century. Catholicism is one of the two major legacies from the Spanish colonial era, the other being Spanish as the nation's language. The Catholic Church was a privileged institution until the mid nineteenth century. It was the sole permissible church in the colonial era and into the early Mexican Republic, following independence in 1821. Following independence, it involved itself directly in politics, including in matters that did not specifically involve the Church.
  In the mid-nineteenth century the liberal Reform brought major changes in church-state relations. Mexican liberals in power challenged the Catholic Church's role, particularly in reaction to its involvement in politics. The Reform curtailed the Church's role in education, property ownership, and control of birth, marriage, and death records, with specific anticlerical laws. Many of these were incorporated into the Constitution of 1857, restricting the Church's corporate ownership of property and other limitations.
context_section_description: The Bourbon Reforms had strengthened the role of the State at the expense of the Catholic Church. Parish priests and other secular clergy in particular experienced not only loss of status, but loss of income. The crown had created a new administrative regime as part of its civil reforms. In indigenous communities the parish priest, who under the Habsburgs had functioned as a representative of both the Church and the crown, was now supplanted by civil authorities. Curates could no longer use corporal punishment, manage confraternity funds, or undertake church construction projects without a license from the crown. The parish priest had often dealt with regulation of public morals, but changes in their powers meant they no longer could mete out punishment for drunkenness, gambling, adultery, or consensual unions without benefit of marriage.
  This loss of power and influence in local communities contributed not only to the alienation of the lower secular clergy from the crown, but also began to dismantle the judicial state. As the crown strengthened its own civil role, it unwittingly undermined the aura of the sacred from its power, so that the monarch became to be viewed more as an oppressive authoritarian rather than a benevolent father figure. The Bourbon crown's local representatives were often military men or administrators with no reverence for the Church as an institution; no respect for the local priest, whom they sometimes insulted publicly; and no understanding of local life ways. They burst into churches during Mass to arrest Indians, "sometimes shouting obscenities and insulting the priest if he objected."
  This lower secular clergy was "often accused of leading unruly protests against the acts of royal officials." When Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808, forcing the Bourbon monarch to abdicate and placing his own brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne, there was a crisis of legitimacy of crown rule in Spain's overseas empire. Having spent decades alienating the lower clergy by its measures, the Bourbon monarchy found itself without priests supporting it, but who participated in the insurgency for independence.
  Two lower clerics led it, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and José María Morelos – national heroes in Mexico, with Mexican states named after them. Also extremely important in the struggle for independence was the symbolic role of the Virgin of Guadalupe for insurgents, but also the symbolic role of the Virgin of Los Remedios for the royalists.
  The insurgency for independence in the period 1810-13 was prominently led by lower secular clerics, but the top levels of episcopal hierarchy strongly condemned it. When Hidalgo was captured by royalist forces, he was first defrocked as a priest and then turned over to civil authorities and executed. For parish priests, the Bourbon policies of the last 50 years had undermined their authority and distanced the allegiance to the monarch as the patron of the Catholic Church.
  Events in Spain again profoundly affected politics in New Spain and on the position of the leaders of the episcopal hierarchy. Following the ouster of Napoleon, Spanish liberals created a constitution for the first time, establishing the monarch not as an absolute ruler but as a constitutional monarchy, subject to a legislature or cortes. The Spanish liberal Constitution of 1812 had many objectionable elements for the clergy in New Spain, even though it pledged in Article 12: "The religion of the Spanish nation is, and ever shall be, the Catholic Apostolic Roman and only true faith; the State shall, by wise and just laws, protect it and prevent the exercise of any other." A mere constitution could be changed and liberalism as a philosophy did not support religious institutions as such. When Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne, he promised to abide by the constitution, but quickly repudiated it, reasserting Bourbon autocratic rule. Spanish liberals pushed back and a coup of 1820 re-established the constitution.
  In New Spain, the episcopal hierarchy was highly concerned, since their position would be affec
caption: A flag carried by Miguel Hidalgo and his insurgent militia.
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