May 26th, 2023

Anti-Catholic, pro-Socialist, written during the Mexican Revolution, the 1917 Mexican Constitution (which served as a model for the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic Constitution of 1918) included:

Article 3 banned religious schools and demanded secular education only;

Article 5 forbade the establishment of monastic orders;

Article 24 outlawed acts of public worship, which were ordered to be held only in churches under the strict supervision of civil, not religious, authorities;

Article 27, a continuation of the Agrarian Reform Decree of January 6, 1915, permitted the government confiscation of land owned by the Catholic Church and prohibited the Church from owning land;

And Article 130 mandated that only native-born Mexicans could be priests; that only state legislatures could determine the number of priests; that matrimony was exclusively a contract under the auspices of civil authorities; that Catholic churches were to be controlled by the Ministry of the Interior; that spoken and written criticism of the government by religious was absolutely prohibited; and that spiritual formation of priests was forbidden.