ABSTRACT
The prominence of the secular pope advised by a College of Cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and lower clergy masked the fissures in the foundation of the secular revolutionary church. The revolutionary popes periodically convened synods in the form of Institutional Revolutionary Party National Assemblies to bring consistency to recognized beliefs. Neo-liberalism represented heresy against the tenets of Revolutionary Nationalism. The "December crisis"—a state of near-bankruptcy—exploded three weeks after the new revolutionary pope's investiture and produced Mexico's worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Plummeting income deprived the revolutionary church and its secular pope of the hard currency required to fund social projects that had historically preserved the support of its followers. The Mexican revolutionary church had fervent believers who resisted the reproach to true orthodoxy. In reaction to this "violation" of party statutes, the Church excommunicated Cardenas, Munoz Ledo, and other key schismatics in the Democratic Current.
