The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 91, July 1987 - April, 1988 Page: 287
619 p. : ill. (some col.), maps (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Response to the Religious Establishment
reaction. Congress was dissolved and G6mez Farias, denounced as a
heretic, went into exile. In 1836 the government, then headed by Jose
Justo Corro, promulgated a new constitution, which revoked many of
the recent anticlerical measures but did not free the church from the
control of the state.7
The cumulative effect of those years of turmoil on the church was
devastating. From 1804, when 12 million pesos of clerical capital was
seized by the Spanish crown, until 1836, when the Vatican finally recog-
nized the independence of Mexico, the church was in various stages of
decline and disarray, a situation that was only beginning to be reversed
at the time of the Texas Revolution. The point can be made quickly
with a few remarkable statistics. The number of all clergy in Mexico-
regular and secular-declined by 20 percent between 1810o and 1821.
There were half as many secular clergy in Mexico in 1830 as there had
been in 1810. The largely Spanish episcopate loyally returned to Spain
after Mexico won its independence, and the Vatican, which refused to
recognize Mexican independence until 1836, refused to make new ap-
pointments. By 1829 there was no bishop in all of Mexico. There was
no archbishop in Mexico from 1825 until 1840. There was no bishop in
Monterrey, see of the diocese of Linares, which included Texas, be-
tween 1821 and the Revolution of 1836. On the eve of that revolution,
there were two secular priests in all of Texas.8
Such, then, was the ecclesiastical situation confronted by Stephen F.
Austin and Texas colonists prior to 1836. Yet despite this disruption
and confusion, and throughout all the governmental permutations fol-
lowing Mexican independence, the basic statutory and constitutional
position of the Catholic church, and the implications of that position
for Anglo-Texans, remained quite constant. There simply was no se-
rious move between 1821 and 1836 to alter in any way the legal estab-
lishment of the church in Mexico. Its spiritual-if not economic-privi-
leges were supported by virtually all Mexicans. Those privileges were
stated concisely in the federal constitution of 1824 and were never al-
tered throughout the period in which Texas remained a part of Mex-
ico: "The religion of the Mexican nation is and shall perpetually re-
main the Roman Catholic and Apostolic. The nation protects it by just
and wise laws, and prohibits the exercise of every other."' This lan-
guage was repeated verbatim in the ninth article of the constitution of
7Ibid., 347-354"
8 David J. Weber, The Mextcan Frontser, 182 -1846: The Amercan Southwest under Mexico (Al-
buquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 69-73; Mecham, Church and State, 80.
9H. P. N. Gammel (comp.), The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897 ... (io vols.; Austin: Gammel
Book Co., 1898), I, 61.287
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 91, July 1987 - April, 1988, periodical, 1987/1988; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101211/m1/343/: accessed May 6, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.