Syncretic Spectacle Masquerades as Guadalupan Devotion in Mexico City

The EWTN portal (December 5, 2025) reports on the “Guadalupe Night” event organized by the Mexico City metropolitan cathedral, involving a procession with the “Virgin of the Oath,” mariachi-accompanied “Mañanitas,” and a midnight Mass. The event commemorates the 1531 apparitions to St. Juan Diego, with cathedral rector José Carballo claiming it demonstrates how Our Lady of Guadalupe “continues to walk with us.” Postconciliar theologian Eduardo Chávez, director of the “Superior Institute of Guadalupan Studies,” emphasizes the Virgin’s role in “build[ing] the Church” while distorting historical facts about Bishop Zumárraga. The celebration exemplifies the neo-church’s fusion of emotionalist folk religion with theological modernism.

Naturalistic Reduction of the Supernatural

The entire event reduces the miraculous Guadalupe event to a cultural festival, prioritizing mariachi music and communal sentiment over doctrinal substance. Nowhere does the article mention the ex opere operato (by the work performed) efficacy of the sacraments or the necessity of sanctifying grace—truths defined at Trent (Session VII, Canon 6). Instead, Carballo’s statement that Guadalupe provides “comfort,” “strength,” and “guidance” echoes the Protestant notion of religion as therapeutic self-help, condemned by Pius XI in Quas Primas as “the cult of man” (n. 18).

Historical Revisionism and Omission of Catholic Triumphalism

Chávez’s reference to Zumárraga’s 1529 letter—which lamented Spanish colonial abuses—implicitly endorses liberation theology’s Marxist narrative. This ignores how the Guadalupe miracle ended human sacrifice</i and converted nine million Aztecs within a decade—a supernatural triumph requiring no secular apologies. The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia documents that Zumárraga burned pagan codices to eradicate idolatry (Vol. XV, p. 767), an act the neo-church would now condemn as “intolerant.”