The End of Catholic Mexico: Causes and Consequences of the Mexican Reforma

by David Allen Gilbert

In The End of Catholic Mexico , historian David Gilbert provides a new interpretation of one of the defining events of Mexican the Reforma. During this period, Mexico was transformed from a Catholic confessional state into a modern secular nation, sparking a three-year civil war in the process. While past accounts have portrayed the Reforma as a political contest, ending with a liberal triumph over conservative elites, Gilbert argues that it was a much broader culture war centered on religion. This dynamic, he contends, explains why the resulting conflict was more violent and the outcome more extreme than other similar contests during the nineteenth century.

Gilbert’s fresh account of this pivotal moment in Mexican history will be of interest to scholars of postindependence Mexico, Latin American religious history, nineteenth-century church history, and US historians of the antebellum republic.

314 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2024

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[Qdysseus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since its independence in 1821, Mexico had existed as a Catholic confessional state. Mexicans were baptized, married, and buried by the Catholic Church, which also provided the nation's social services and most of its education. But many liberals, especially since the defeat of 1848, longed for Mexico to become a secular state that would attract non-Catholic immigrants.

The culture war in Mexico was won by the liberals, and society would henceforth be organized based on the materialistic and anticlerical ideology of the Enlightenment. This creed would later be modified by Positivism, then Marxism, and even post-Modernism, but the marginalization of religion was now a permanent feature of Mexican life.

A tragic story of an overwhelmingly Catholic country torn apart from the inside by foreign influences and traitors. Unfortunately, a story that has been told many times in history.

“…when those who want to have a temple should build it themselves” - Malo