A Divided Catholic Republic? The inherited ecclesiological dispute and rampant liberalism in the independence of Mexico

Abstract

The Independence of Mexico found a country furrowed by religious divisions which became immediately noticeable in the republic created in 1824. The 1826 Senate report on the Real Patronato expressed the prevailing tensions and the different disturbing facets they presented to a Catholic state. The controversy had many dimensions, both domestic and international, and revealed the existence of an intense ecclesiologic debate bringing together thinkers and politicians from both sides of the Atlantic. This paper mainly underlines the role played by the failure of Spain’s liberal Triennium (1820-1823) and Spanish critics to stir up Mexican perception of the dangers that the Catholic hierarchy and the Holy See represented for a Catholic state. The author suggests the need to consider how this confrontation, handled with amazing self-assurance by Mexican ecclesiastical authorities, resulted directly from the tense relations between the Spanish monarchy and the Vatican throughout the eighteenth century.