Scottish Catholic Observer

Gerald Warner

“I  die, but God does not die…”

Those words of the Blessed Anacleto González Flores as he was martyred for the Catholic Faith during the Cristero War in Mexico in 1927 are appropriate to reflect upon in the Easter period, celebrating Our Lord’s victory over death. The Cristero War is also an episode of which Catholics should be conscious as we enter a new era of persecution.

Awareness of the Cristeros will shortly be heightened with the release of the film Cristiada in which the Blessed Anacleto is played by the Mexican actor Eduardo Verastegui.

Since the film does not yet have a release date, it is not possible to assess it or recommend it unreservedly; but the trailer looks promising. Mr Verestegui has a good track record as a pro-life campaigner and the film seems favourable to Catholicism. If these good auguries are fulfilled, it will deserve support at the box office for championing the most unfashionable cause in the world today: Catholic civilisation.

It was that civilisation that Plutarco Elías Calles, the fanatically anti-Catholic Freemasonic president of Mexico attempted to extirpate. Anti-Catholic laws confiscated Church property, forbade clerical dress, made priests virtual outlaws and eventually banned Catholic emblems even in private houses. The Cristeros were faithful Catholics who, after trying peaceful resistance in the form of an economic boycott that failed because of the lack of support from rich Catholics whose commercial interests it damaged, finally took up arms against the atheistic regime.

The bishops initially backed them, then repudiated the Cristeros. The ruthlessness of the government forces was appalling. Between 1926 and 1934, at least 4000 of Mexico’s 4500 priests were expelled or killed; only 334 clergy remained to serve 15 million Mexicans. By 1935 there were no priests in 17 of the country’s provinces. The disastrous outcome was largely the fault of the Mexican hierarchy, which duped itself into signing an agreement with President Calles that effectively made no concessions at all.

The Cristeros, whose 50,000-strong army had a good prospect of victory, were ordered to lay down their arms under pain of excommunication.

The Catholic rebels who had scorned the machine-guns of the government forces yielded to the threat of spiritual death. The treacherous President Calles then shot 6000 of them, many in front of their wives and children.

Almost 200,000 people died in the Cristero War but, if it were not for Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory, whose central character is a very unrepresentative Mexican priest, few people would have heard of this ferocious persecution.

The most famous Mexican martyr, Fr Miguel Pro, whose execution was photographed by order of President Calles, died with his arms extended in a cross, exclaiming “Long live Christ the King!” He was Beatified in 1988.

One bishop who redeemed the reputation of the Mexican hierarchy, Bishop Rafael Guizar Valencia, served his flock in disguise at grave peril and although he escaped martyrdom was Beatified in 1995. Pope John Paul II Canonised 25 martyrs of the Cristero War in 2000 and 13 more were beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, including Anacleto Gonzáles Flores.

These are saints for our times. For the spirit of Plutarco Calles reigns in the European Union, the United Nations and militantly secularist governments such as our own whose attacks on Christianity are growing more aggressive by the day. They have so far been encouraged by the passivity of Christians in the face of a persecution that is relentlessly turning the ratchet of secularism. The forced closure of Catholic adoption agencies in England was just a foretaste of things to come.

History shows appeasement leads eventually to a much worse conflict, one that would have been avoided if the aggressor had been deterred sooner by firm resistance. The appeaser who takes refuge in the soft option bears part of the responsibility for the heavy cost ultimately paid. In extreme circumstances, such as do not yet obtain today, Catholics have the moral right to defend themselves in a just war. Heroic episodes such as the Crusades, the creation of the Military Orders under the patronage of St Bernard, the revolt in the Vendée against the French Revolution and the Spanish Civil War illustrate the fact that, in extremis, Catholics have a right to self-defence.

Turning the other cheek is the Christian response to a personal insult. In a case where the Faith is threatened with extermination, where the Sacraments cannot be administered or youth Catechised, there is a duty to preserve an environment in which men can pursue salvation. The Cristeros recognised that duty and acted accordingly.

Heaven forbid that the next generation should encounter such a nightmare challenge; but the knowledge that, if it did, Catholics would rise to that challenge would be the most effective means of preventing it ever happening.