Church and State
An elite-elite compromise, to which the Cristeros were not partners, formally ended the rebellions, although sporadic violence continued into the 1930s. This ending recalls the pre-Revolutionary strategy of social action, which sought to strengthen the parish structure while at the same time delegating to laity the responsibility for leading social organizations. An assessment of social action in terms of lay leadership as an organization goal suggests the failure of church strategy in Mexico, whereas it was particularly successful in western Europe during the same period. During 1911-13, the period of most clearly articulated political participation, Catholic laity was unable to function autonomously of clergy in Mexico. After the PCN debacle, Catholic social action ebbed and flowed, reacting to the strengths and weaknesses of the state. Middle-class intellectuals, both laity and clergy, led organizations often constituted from a mixed social base. However, this pattern generally disappeared with the Cristero Rebellion, and the 1926-29 social movements, articulated through civil disobedience, riot, and guerrilla warfare, rarely followed an intelligentsia or an elite clerical leadership.
When church and state reached an agreement and public worship resumed, the insurgency ended. Ironically, we must understand this end to the Cristero Rebellion as an autonomous act taken by pueblos across the country. However, it also meant the end of social Catholicism, because the bishops would not soon enact another social policy through groups headed by laity. Catholic social organizations had not been the principal mobilized force in the rebellion, yet the rebellion revealed a church unable to accept the democratic opening resulting from their own policy of using lay participation to push religious and social issues and solutions.