I just saw the movie "For Greater Glory" with my family, and it was a great movie

[livingwordunity]

I highly recommend it to everyone.

 

[the_phoenix]

I highly recommend it to everyone.

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

I don’t see that there was any need for Catholics to take up arms against government soldiers over the anti-Catholic legislation in Mexico in the 1920s.

Nonviolent resistance would have worked as well, and would not have required any Catholics to make widows and orphans out of the wives and children of Mexican government soldiers who were just doing their job.

The laws imposed by the Mexican government were wrong. But nonviolent means would have caused a rollback. The pope explicitly approved of the nonviolent means being used by Mexican Catholics. No pope ever approved of armed insurrection by these Catholic Mexicans.

We also have the example the early Church, when it was being persecuted by the Roman Empire. They did not take up arms. They became martyrs. And, after a time, the persecutions died down. Catholic writers also wrote apologetical books to show pagan Roman leaders that the Catholic faith was not a danger to the empire.

Christ Himself, when He was being persecuted, did not take up arms against his persecutors. Rather, He prayed for them.

As everyone knows, while on the Cross, Jesus prayed to His Father regarding the very men who were killing Him: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Luke 23:34.

Jesus could have summoned an army of angels to utterly wipe Pontius Pilate and the Romans off the face of the earth. But He didn’t to that.

Jesus taught: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” Matthew 5:10-11.

Never once does Jesus say “Blessed are those who fight and kill their oppressors.”

St. Stephen, when being persecuted, as depicted in the Book of Acts, does not hurl threats of retaliation against his persecutors.

I think this movie also fails to convey the historical backdrop that motivated the leaders of the Mexican government of this time to be anti-Catholic. For most of Mexican history prior to the time of the Cristeros, most of the leaders of the Catholic Church in Mexico openly sided with the rich landowners in matters related to government affairs. The rich landowners were of the white European race. The vast majority of the poor people in Mexico were had brown skin and were either descended from the native (pre-European) peoples of Mexico, or were mixed race (mestizos). The anti-Catholic laws were passed with the aim of preventing the rich, European race, landowning class from dominating Mexico society as it has in the past. In a way, the persecution of and injustices against the Catholic Church in the early 1920s were a result of injustices the Catholic Church supported in Mexico going all the way back to Cortés, the Conquistadors, and the encomienda system of rule that created de facto slaves out of the natives.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. But that anti-Catholic sentiment of that period in Mexico did not just come out of nowhere. Recent popes have acknowledged the injustices carried out by the Spanish in the colonial period and by the white upper ruling class people even after the Latin American nations obtained independence from Spain.

What the Mexican government was doing in the 1920s to Catholics was not comparable to what the Nazis were doing to the Jews in Europe in the 1940s. The Mexican government was not carrying out a genocide, attempting to exterminate every living Catholic in Mexico. It just wasn’t anything like that.

The movie doesn’t show it, but the Cristeros committed atrocities and war crimes against civilians too. That would have never happened if the Catholics had remained in a nonviolent mode.

If the Cristeros were justified in their violence, then African-Americans in the USA in the 1920s would also have been justified in carrying out an armed rebellion against the USA, given all the discrimination in jobs, housing, shopping, and transportation that they faced, and given all the lynchings of blacks by white mobs, the rape of black women by white men. Yet, I think we are all glad that no such armed rebellion occurred, and that when the movement for African-American civil rights did get going in the 1960s, that its leader, Dr. King, took a strong stand for Christian nonviolence.

The Catholic Church has a Just War Doctrine to provide guidance as to when organized armed violence is justifiable. For example, in 2003, Blessed Pope John Paul II applied the tenets of the Catholic Just War Doctrine to declare that the invasion of Iraq by the US and the UK was unjust. I don’t think the Cristeros War passes the Just War test either.

We are inclined to cheer on the Cristeros, because we love violence. We live in a culture soaked in images on violence on TV, in computer games, in sports [especially MMA, hockey, & NFL], and in movies. We are like the decadent ancient pagan Romans in this regard. We love blood.

The movie in question, about the Cristeros War is called “For Greater Glory.” I think the Mexican Catholics would have really given greater glory to the King of Peace if they had kept their reaction to the government in a nonviolent mode.

 

[mab23]

Solid points you have, Bartolome Casas

but… I still enjoyed the movie , it is what happened , can’t change the past only the future

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

“I believe in freedom.”

That line is spoken in the movie “For Greater Glory” by the main character played by Andy Garcia. This main character is the retired army general who ends up leading the armed rebellion of Mexican Catholics.

The context of this line that the retired general’s wife says to the retired general:

“You cannot fight for something you do not believe in.”

By that she was saying that he could not lead a rebellion for the Catholic Faith since he did not believe in the Catholic Faith. The retired general’s answer:

“I believe in freedom.”

You can see this dialogue in the trailer which you can see here: youtube.com/watch?v=SGmpZyPgKAk

“I believe in freedom” is not a Catholic answer. Did Jesus tell his apostles and disciples “Go forth, and wage war for freedom!” The founding father of the USA did preach that. But not the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Jesus taught:

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.”
“Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Some armed resistance is justified. That’s what the Catholic Just War doctrine teaches us. Defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the 1940s was justified, as virtually all Catholics agree. Catholic are not pacifists (this is why Dorothy Day will probably never be canonized).

But I feel confident that no pope would ever approve the armed rebellion of the Mexican Catholics in the Cristero War.

True, some Mexicans who were martyred in the course of that war have been canonized. But no pope approved the war while it was happening, and none has approved it since.

Thus, I conclude that the movie “For Greater Glory” sets a bad example for Catholics and the world. It teaches a wrong lesson. I believe it promotes more of tea party mentality than a Catholic mentality.

 

[Elizium23]

[BIBLEDRB]Ecclesiastes 3:3[/BIBLEDRB]

I do not know if any people who took up arms and fought the government were beatified or canonized. In a brief survey of the martyrs, it seems that most were priests who clandestinely served their flock until they were captured and sometimes tortured.

While these holy men did not take up arms themselves, they aided and supported those who did. They performed their sacred duty of watching over their flock through the good and bad times. The Church has waged her own wars in the fullness of time. There has been peaceful resistance to persecution and there has been armed conflict to defend the innocent.

Would you say that Hitler should have been allowed to take over Europe, and exterminate the Jews, because Jesus said to turn the other cheek? Was not the nuclear devastation of the city of Nagasaki supreme Christian retribution for the martyrdoms in 1622? Should Christians stop supporting Israel, and allow the Muslim armies to roll over everyone else in the Middle East?

I can understand pacifism, but I can’t understand being a doormat. The Cristeros were not doormats and they responded in a way appropriate to their culture and history. Blame them if you must, but it is a part of our history now, and those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

Would you say that Hitler should have been allowed to take over Europe, and exterminate the Jews, because Jesus said to turn the other cheek?..I can understand pacifism, but I can’t understand being a doormat. The Cristeros were not doormats and they responded in a way appropriate to their culture and history.

The Catholic Church teaches that sometimes armed resistance is justified. That’s what the Catholic Just War doctrine teaches us.

Defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the 1940s was justified, as virtually all Catholics agree. Catholic are not pacifists (this is why Dorothy Day will probably never be canonized).

Some Mexicans who were martyred in the association with that war have been canonized.

Wikipedia says this:

“On May 21, 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized a group of 25 saints and martyrs arising from the Mexican Cristero War. The vast majority are Roman Catholic priests who were executed for carrying out their ministry despite the suppression under the anti-clerical laws of Plutarco Elías Calles. Priests who took up arms, however, were excluded from the process.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_of_the_Cristero_War

No pope approved the war while it was happening, and none has approved it since.

Thus, I conclude that the movie “For Greater Glory” sets a bad example for Catholics and the world. It teaches a wrong lesson.

 

[Elizium23]

I don’t necessarily disagree with your position on Just War theory, but I will also point out that the Church never went so far as to condemn the armed rebellion of the Cristeros, nor did it say that martyrs who took up arms were sinners burning in Hell. Is it a sin to participate in an unjust war?? What if your confessor has been shot by a firing squad and your bishop has been deported? I don’t know, it seems like Just War has a wide gray area.

 

[livingwordunity]

“I believe in freedom” is not a Catholic answer.

The one who said it was an atheist. However, the Catholic Church is for freedom when it is defined as having the freedom to do what is right in God’s eyes. The problem is when people confuse freedom with license.

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

I don’t necessarily disagree with your position on Just War theory, but I will also point out that the Church never went so far as to condemn the armed rebellion of the Cristeros, nor did it say that martyrs who took up arms were sinners burning in Hell. Is it a sin to participate in an unjust war?? What if your confessor has been shot by a firing squad and your bishop has been deported? I don’t know, it seems like Just War has a wide gray area.

In 2003, Blessed Pope John Paul II applied the tenets of the Catholic Just War Doctrine to declare that the planned invasion of Iraq by the US and the UK was unjust, immoral, and should not be carried out. Many respectable news web sites reported this and can still be found.

Catholic Just War Doctrine is something real. It is serious. It has real standards that must be applied and heeded.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this:

2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the “just war” doctrine.

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm​

 

[JimG]

The Cristero rebellion did not originate with the Magistium of the Church, but with peasants who were outraged at the attempt of the government to literally force the Church out of existence. The dictator Calles hated religion and believed he could entirely eliminate it with his reign of terror. He seized churchs and convents and seminaries. He bragged about the number of priests whom he executed. Priests were fined for wearing clerical garb, they were tortured and killed, some while celebrating Mass.

I do not blame the Cristeros for fighting back. I think they were right to do so. I hope that if the Church were so persecuted in our own country we would have the courage to fight back.

Here are some links with more information and reviews of the movie.

ncregister.com/daily-news/todaygreater-glory-we-need-to-ask-for-the-strength-to-be-cristeros/#ixzz1wYXEE6pD

zenit.org/article-34874?l=english

catholicworldreport.com/Item/1387/when_the_catholic_faith_was_outlawed.aspx

 

[Elizium23]

Did Pope Pius decree that the Cristero war was ‘unjust, immoral, and should not be carried out’?

Were Mexican priests directed to discourage people of faith from taking up arms?

Blessed John Paul the Great decreed that in 2003. That was two years after the war in Afghanistan had started. Was Afghanistan a just war and how was it unlike Iraq? What of the status of Catholics who were already in the military? Should they lay down their arms immediately? Would they become martyrs for refusing to obey otherwise lawful commands from their superiors? Would they become sinners if they continued in their service to the USA?

I am a Knight of Columbus, these are concerning questions for me. We routinely pray for our friends in military service. Many of our members are veterans who served this country. When you sign up to the military, you don’t get to choose which war to fight. Should I have preached on Memorial Day that the fallen are all burning in Hell now? Must faithful priests withhold Holy Communion from anyone in uniform now? Is the Just War doctrine restrictive or permissive: are we required to wait for the Holy See to approve a war before we can fight it, or can we enter a war with their tacit approval and fight until it is condemned?

 

[Roy5]

I have not been to “For Greater Glory” yet. I am debating. Friends tell me it is very violent and seems to justify violence. That troubles me, if true.

One friend, a student of Latin American history, stated that it is very biased, giving only one side when the circumstances were very confused. The government, he says, was trying to limit the power of the Church in Mexico at that time, as they perceived the Church to be aligned with the rich who were oppressing the poor. I understand that the Knights of Columbus helped finance the film, which suggests that it's intention primarily is to promote the Church. 

 Two other things trouble me.

 Some will jump to the conclusion that it is meant to arouse Catholics now against the Obama Administration in the name of religious freedom. Let's be honest. The record on the Catholic Church on religious freedom is nothing to be proud of. Re-read the "Syllabus of Errors" by Pius IX, available on line. I believe that was issued in 1864? The Church has taught in the past that 'error as no rights'. What is error to one, of course, can appear to be truth to another. I worry if the US Catholic Church gets too embroiled in partisan politics. It will only lose millions more who already have been troubled by the continuing clergy sex scandal, Church criticism of the nuns, attacks on the Girl Scouts, financial malfeasance in the Vatican, the release of many confidential papal documents, etc.

  The Mexican situation then may be compared to the Spanish Civil War later (1936-39) in some ways. Neither side had much to recommend it. The government in Spain - the Loyalists or Republicans in that struggle - did some grossly evil things against the Church, which it felt was allied with the extreme right. It was increasingly influenced by the left, even the Soviet-Communist left. On the other hand, the Nationalists under Franco were fascists, aided by Hitler and Mussolini, and they, too, committed serious war crimes during and following that war. Today Spain seems to be more and more secular - permitting same-sex marriage, for example - and one wonders why this happens when the country is so overwhelmingly Catholic.

 

[JimG]

Roy5, I don’t think that the Mexican government at the time was trying to limit the power of the Church.
It was trying to destroy the Church.

 

[Megan7]

The Cristero rebellion did not originate with the Magistium of the Church, but with peasants who were outraged at the attempt of the government to literally force the Church out of existence. The dictator Calles hated religion and believed he could entirely eliminate it with his reign of terror. He seized churchs and convents and seminaries. He bragged about the number of priests whom he executed. Priests were fined for wearing clerical garb, they were tortured and killed, some while celebrating Mass.

I do not blame the Cristeros for fighting back. I think they were right to do so. I hope that if the Church were so persecuted in our own country we would have the courage to fight back.

Here are some links with more information and reviews of the movie.

ncregister.com/daily-news/todaygreater-glory-we-need-to-ask-for-the-strength-to-be-cristeros/#ixzz1wYXEE6pD

zenit.org/article-34874?l=english

catholicworldreport.com/Item/1387/when_the_catholic_faith_was_outlawed.aspx

Thanks for the links!

 

[Megan7]

I highly recommend it to everyone.

 

[manualman]

Thus, I conclude that the movie “For Greater Glory” sets a bad example for Catholics and the world. It teaches a wrong lesson. I believe it promotes more of tea party mentality than a Catholic mentality.

I conclude that you haven’t seen the movie and are basing your judgement on a knee jerk reaction arising from your pre-conceived notions.

There are several serious flaws in your reasoning.

1. The Calles government oppressions were not rhetorical or merely economic. They went out and murdered priests merely for being priests, not fomenting counter-revolution.
2. What you say about the colonial government and church has merit. What you omit is the fact that the Mexican government was STILL controlled by the nation’s pale whiter wealthy, not the indigenous masses. They just kicked out the European catholic elite and substituted in the European “post-enlightenment” elite. The Cristeros were NOT generally the wealthy, pale skinned urbanites, they were precisely the indigenous populations that had been exploited by the Conquistadors and now were being exploited by the new power class of Mexican government. It appears you have no knowledge of this from your post.
3. Many Federales DID desert and refuse to commit the atrocities they were ordered to perform. Indeed being ordered to commit mass murder was precisely the reason so many deserted and provided arms and ammunition to the Cristeros. “Following orders” didn’t fly at Nuremburg and I see no reason to allow it here. The Mexican government was every bit as evil as the Nazis. If you deny this as a just war in theory, then I guess you regret WWII as well.
4. Again, you obviously didn’t see the movie. At least one example of Cristeros atrocities is shown, including the context of how such things ALWAYS arise in war. Dresden didn’t make the Allies the bad guys in WWII and similar incidents in this war don’t change the basic facts either. War is an awful thing and killing other human beings can rarely be contained into neat, tidy moral boxes. It is a monster when let loose, which is why we try to avoid it when possible. But it is NOT always possible or moral to cower from conflict and allow an aggressor to brutalize innocents.

I suggest you review catholic just war theory a bit more before condemning people you’ve never met and appear to know little about.

The capacity Americans have today for moral equivalence fallacies amazes me. Youd think people would learn to see through such shams once it got so absurd that even Osama Bin Laden attempted to justify 9/11 with such reasoning. But people still buy it. Amazing.

 

[manualman]

I should clarify that I had a bit of knowledge of the conflict even before the movie from knowing some priests that have served in poor Mexican areas and some biographical reading about Miguel Pro. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I know badly reasoned moral equivalence when I see it.

 

[EasterJoy]

I don’t see that there was any need for Catholics to take up arms against government soldiers over the anti-Catholic legislation in Mexico in the 1920s.

Nonviolent resistance would have worked as well, and would not have required any Catholics to make widows and orphans out of the wives and children of Mexican government soldiers who were just doing their job.

The laws imposed by the Mexican government were wrong. But nonviolent means would have caused a rollback. The pope explicitly approved of the nonviolent means being used by Mexican Catholics. No pope ever approved of armed insurrection by these Catholic Mexicans…

…I think this movie also fails to convey the historical backdrop that motivated the leaders of the Mexican government of this time to be anti-Catholic…

Two wrongs don’t make a right. But that anti-Catholic sentiment of that period in Mexico did not just come out of nowhere. Recent popes have acknowledged the injustices carried out by the Spanish in the colonial period and by the white upper ruling class people even after the Latin American nations obtained independence from Spain.

What the Mexican government was doing in the 1920s to Catholics was not comparable to what the Nazis were doing to the Jews in Europe in the 1940s. The Mexican government was not carrying out a genocide, attempting to exterminate every living Catholic in Mexico. It just wasn’t anything like that.

The movie doesn’t show it, but the Cristeros committed atrocities and war crimes against civilians too. That would have never happened if the Catholics had remained in a nonviolent mode.

If the Cristeros were justified in their violence, then African-Americans in the USA in the 1920s would also have been justified in carrying out an armed rebellion against the USA, given all the discrimination in jobs, housing, shopping, and transportation that they faced, and given all the lynchings of blacks by white mobs, the rape of black women by white men. Yet, I think we are all glad that no such armed rebellion occurred, and that when the movement for African-American civil rights did get going in the 1960s, that its leader, Dr. King, took a strong stand for Christian nonviolence.

The Catholic Church has a Just War Doctrine to provide guidance as to when organized armed violence is justifiable. For example, in 2003, Blessed Pope John Paul II applied the tenets of the Catholic Just War Doctrine to declare that the invasion of Iraq by the US and the UK was unjust. I don’t think the Cristeros War passes the Just War test either.

We are inclined to cheer on the Cristeros, because we love violence. We live in a culture soaked in images on violence on TV, in computer games, in sports [especially MMA, hockey, & NFL], and in movies. We are like the decadent ancient pagan Romans in this regard. We love blood.

The movie in question, about the Cristeros War is called “For Greater Glory.” I think the Mexican Catholics would have really given greater glory to the King of Peace if they had kept their reaction to the government in a nonviolent mode.

Hmmm…so tell me, was the French revolution a matter of race, too? Sometimes, you know, in the end it is about a grab for power and wealth, with both sides hypocritically claiming to have the best interests of the poor in mind. The Mexican government was not trying to kill all the Catholics, OK, but it was trying to kill Catholicism. The goal, either way, was that there be no more Catholics in Mexico, just as those wanting absolute power in France were determined not to reform the Church, but to wipe it out entirely.

The pacifist priests were murdered, too. When a priest who has harmed no one is shot, when churches are descrated, when the practice of religion is forbidden, then I think we have reached the point described in the Declaration of Independence:

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Why was King George III met with an armed uprising, from people who were not economically impoverished and not ethnically distinct? It was because he was determined to use troops on the ground to maintain his power, rather than a just system of goverance. It was obvious to the colonists that non-violent means of protest were not going to be heard, but rather had brought a boot down onto their necks.

If the Mexican government did not justly need to be met with armed resistance when the Cristeros movement began, rather than nonviolent means only, it undoubtedly did by the time the uprising was done. Would anyone today think it wrong, after all, if the indigeous Mexicans had killed Spaniards trying to force them to* become* Catholic, centuries before? Of course not. Being forced into or out of your way of worship is most certainly a just reason to take up arms; the violation is that basic to one’s humanity.

 

[Erich]

“I believe in freedom.”

The timing of this movie couldn’t have been better. After all, right now we are engaged in a national battle over whether the government can define what constitutes a Catholic hospital, school or charity, and whether these institutions will be able to operate in harmony with Church teaching.

Who would have thought, even a few years ago, that a 14-day period of prayer, education, and action in support of religious freedom would ever be necessary right here in the USA?