Thread: Catholic Church - Mexico - Church & State

from another "Hispanic" opinion website:
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In the recent MEXICAN presidential election, there were charges that the Church was interfering with the election by officially telling members to vote for "Church friendly" candidates. Now, with the abortion issue, the Church is right into that argument. Not only did they organize demonstrations but also the lawmakers who voted for the law were threatened with excommunication. But maybe not. The Cardinal of México City, when asked by reporters if he favored this, he told them "yes". But when the Church published the transcript of the news conference, the "yes" was edited out. And another voice of the Church points out that the politicians' job is to represent their constituents. In the Federal District, reliable polls show that slightly over half of the males support the abortion law. And almost 70% of the females do. The politicians listened to their people.

In reality, the Church is fighting gradual reduction of their influence in México and Latin America. Their position is not only taking a strong right-to-life stance; they also condemn use of contraceptives. The mere fact that México's population growth is the lowest in Latin America and on a par with the US would suggest that most Mexicans simply ignore this unrealistic later position of the Church. In short, the Church is taking a contradictory and illogical position. One would ask that if you wanted to reduce unwanted pregnancies, you would support the use of contraceptives, wouldn't one?

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The percentage of México's population that regards themselves as Catholic is steadily shrinking. From the early 1990s to now, that percentage has shrunk from about 97% to between 85% and 90%. The Church is slowly loosing members to various Protestant movements and is even more apparent in Brazil. The Pope's recent visit to Brazil was controversial to say the least. As reported from Brazil, the Pope was "arrogant" in condemning both abortions and the use of contraceptives, while only supporting sexual abstinence for birth control. However, it is official government policy there to distribute condoms in schools to curb AIDS and unwanted pregnancies, (which seems to be working).

Also of interest is the large defection from the Catholic Church of Mexican immigrants to the US.

The Church fights back but one wonders what this will lead to.
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Author:
Richard Baldwin (Gringo, married, entrepreneur in Mexico)
Hispanicvista.com

So the Church could not interfer with Mexican affairs so they have decided to interfer with American politics. Tax them and see how fast they get out of politics.

until about 10-20 years ago, priests and nuns were not allowed to wear their clerical garb in public....

while they are more open now about their clerical status, they are losing clout over the masses in Mexico. So they hope that by bringing them here, the poor will be grateful to the Church and behave and tithe in the US...