Values of life and family in catastrophic decline in Mexico
Over the past decade, the state of the Mexican family – so long its strongest institution – has entered into the worst crisis of its history. The divorce rate in Mexico has skyrocketed, the country’s most eminent Catholic prelates have endorsed homosexual unions, and Catholic publications have begun to echo transgender and radical feminist ideology. During the same period, the country’s pro-life and pro-family movement has suffered massive setbacks, as the Supreme Court has imposed homosexual “marriage” on the states and has struck down state laws prohibiting the killing of the unborn.
The situation represents an almost perfect reversal in the battle to defend life and family in Mexico, a battle that was carried out for decades in a highly effective way by both clergy and laity, and successfully thwarted anti-family agendas in most Mexican states. Today, in contrast, the federal government is imposing the same policies everywhere, and is silencing critics of transgender ideology with court orders and fines. The second largest Catholic country in the world now appears to be succumbing to the “culture of death” so long condemned by Pope John Paul II.
The tide against pro-life and pro-family values seems to have definitively turned in 2016, following a visit to the country by Pope Francis and the issuance of the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia. Although the Church and Mexican voters struck an historic blow against homosexual “marriage” early in the year, by the end of the year a new apostolic nuncio was condemning pro-family marches, the cardinal archbishop of Mexico City had apologized for criticizing the LGBT lifestyle, and the divorce rate had made its biggest jump in history. Since then, anti-family secularism has scored one victory after another in the country and shows no sign of stopping, while the Catholic hierarchy gives muted and ambiguous responses.
Mexico’s struggle to protect life and family
Since the 1970s, Mexico and other Latin American countries have been locked in a struggle with international organizations that have pushed to change their laws protecting the right to life and the integrity of the family, as well as suppressing population growth through artificial birth control. In Mexico, in particular, this struggle has been seen as a continuation of the fight of the “Cristeros” of the 1920s and 1930s against grooming sex education imposed by the Mexican government on the nation’s children, who were simultaneously denied a religious education during the period.
The five visits of Pope John Paul II to Mexico (in 1979, 1990, 1993, 1999 and 2002) and his many visits to other Latin American countries had a profound impact on the region’s battles over such issues. On those trips, the pontiff repeatedly and adamantly defended the right to life and the traditional family, and clearly condemned abortion, contraception, and divorce. Little headway was made by anti-family groups in Latin America during John Paul II’s pontificate.
