RELIGIOUS STRUCTURE IN MEXICO.

This article focuses on religious structure in Mexico, and presents a study's report in this regard. To some observers, Catholicism in Mexico is purely a matter of superstition and ignorance. Such superficial interpretations of Mexican religious practices are easily come upon because genuine religious conviction is difficult to evaluate. The continuum from formal Catholicism through nominal and cultural Catholicism to folk Catholicism enables one to examine variations in belief and practice without obscuring their complexity. The article author expected that folk Catholicism had little relationship with the main church, but upon closer scrutiny, he found that this is not true. The study, conducted by the author led him to conclude that what seemed on the surface to be an indigenous folk Catholicism centered in the barrio chapels is in fact no different from what occurs when townspeople attend to their religious duties in the main church. In the matter of family attitudes toward the Church, the author found that among formal Catholics all members of family practice the faith; among the nominal group both husband and wife as well as the children attend Mass regularly, but greater effort is made by the women.