Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, 1750–1940 by Margaret Chowning (review)

Reviewed by: Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, 1750–1940 by Margaret Chowning Ethan Besser Fredrick Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, 1750–1940. By margaret chowning. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. xiii + 362 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-17724-3. $45.00 (hardcover). Margaret Chowning dedicates her recent book, Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, to her sister, Jane. "Jane's frustrating role as a woman with natural leadership abilities who was committed to a church that did not even allow female servers at Sunday worship was the inspiration for this book."1 This book studies the contradiction of women's leadership in the explicitly patriarchal Catholic Church in the Long Nineteenth Century in Mexico. She approaches the paradox through two guiding questions: to what degree were Catholic women active in Church activities and to what extent can their ideas and voices be detected in the archive? Over the course of eight chapters divided into three parts on Independence, the Reforma,2 and the Porfiriato,3 Chowning concludes that women constituted the leadership and majority of members of Catholic associations from colonial cofradías4 to Post-Revolutionary Catholic Action. Despite official teaching and public statements on the subservient role of the "weaker sex," women were the primary organizers, fundraisers, and occasionally activists of the Catholic faith in Mexico in this period. While women's relationship with the Church changed over time, many women [End Page 337] believed Catholic associations were crucial in the maintenance of public welfare, morality, and women's security. Catholic Women is best understood as a companion piece to Chowning's 2006 book, Rebellious Nuns,5 which examines Mexican women's lives in holy orders. Together with Catholic Women, which examines lay women, the two provide a comprehensive survey of Mexican women's relationship to the Church from Independence through the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920).6 Catholic Women provides meaningful criticism of the traditional periodization of Mexican historiography. For example, independence from Spain in 1820 did not immediately bring women into civic life. Instead, debates over establishing religious liberty in 1848 spurred the first mass Catholic women's petition campaign in defense of Catholic supremacy. For the next century, Mexican officials would contend with organized Catholic women in the public arena. Chowning primarily uses an expansive collection of documents from archbishopric archives in Mexico to catalog and analyze the breadth and depth of women's organizations. Association membership lists, signed petitions, and fundraising documents demonstrate that as men opted for secular careers in law, business, and state, women became crucial officers in Church associations and activities. This history of the "feminization" of the Catholic faith will interest scholars trying to understand corresponding phenomena and similar global trends. Priests and laymen initially opposed women's growing social, economic, and political power in these associations. However, clergy realized by the 1870s that women would withdraw their invaluable support if denied leadership roles in lay associations. When the Church-State conflict erupted into violence again in the 1920s, some 85 percent of all members of Catholic associations were women and women were among the most fervent protestors and rebels. Catholic Women develops the current surge in innovative research on the history of Catholicism in Mexico.7 In the past two decades, scholars have studied the social origins of religious conflicts that defined much of Mexico's national history. Generally, these histories [End Page 338] assume Catholic organizational power was destroyed in the Reforma period and slowly rebuilt during the Porfiriato under a more interventionist Vatican. Chowning's work complicates this narrative by proving "the deep and autochthonous roots of women's religious participation in Mexico, back to the colonial period."8 In fact, women's activism grew at moments when the institutional Church was weakest. Given the central role women play in Mexican Catholic history, this means that eras of anti-clerical dominance are also periods of immense Catholic activity. While the power of the bishops waxed and waned in Mexico, "The constant, not phoenix-like, presence of a loyal laity [of women] with a track record of voicing discontent when threatened has given the hierarchy the power to negotiate with the state."9 This is an important reminder to scholars...