Paul V. Murray, a prominent American Catholic in Mexico, served for many years as president of Mexico City College. At the same time, he maintained a lively interest in Mexican history, particularly the Reforma period of church-state conflict. This book, the first of two volumes on the history of the Church in Mexico, is the result of these years of study, writing, and lecturing. Murray makes clear in the Foreword that this is not a history of the Church, nor a “scholarly monograph”; nor will he be “objective,” or “scientific.” Rather it is an “ exploratory study for the general reader, for students, and even for people teaching Mexican history or general church history” (pp. 9-10). Murray intended, then, to write a book of interpretive essays, not narrative history. Yet it is something of both. The essays reflect a partisan view which characterized conservative Catholic thinking during the long struggle against the liberals and the twentieth-century Revolutionaries. And despite the author’s disclaimer, much of the book is a narration of the history of the Mexican Church.
The book fails, in the last analysis, because the essays are not completely convincing, and because the description of past events is colored by his religious viewpoint. Nonetheless, the student of Mexican history can find here much material for further study that would be unattainable elsewhere. It is the author’s hope that the reading of his book “will serve as a stimulus” and will lead to a “general history of the Church in this area of the world which is so badly needed by us all” (p. 10).
