Page - 357 - in Glaubenskämpfe - Katholiken und Gewalt im 19. Jahrhundert

357English Abstracts Michael Snape Catholics, Military Service and Violence in Great Britain during the First World War During the nineteenth century, military service played an important role in advancing Catholic interests in Great Britain. However, despite Catho- lics’ historic commitment to the military, the First World War revealed deep-seated political divisions among Catholics in the British Isles and the wider Empire. Whereas some clergy extolled the war effort and some regions witnessed higher than average conscription levels, others warned for caution or neutrality and had difficulties filling the ranks. In sum, and against the backdrop of Catholic vulnerabilities in a historically Prot- estant state, the conduct of Catholic soldiers in the British Army served as an important vindication of Catholic loyalty towards the nation. It also made soldiers exemplars of Catholic piety amidst a wider religious milieu that was increasingly susceptible to Catholic influences. Ultimately, the violence of war, especially on the Western Front, created a Catholic nar- rative of combat that overlooked internal political cleavages in favour of a religious narrative that celebrated the perceived triumph of the Faith itself. Brian A. Stauffer Between the Soldiers of Pius IX and the Sons of Saint Felicitas: Catholic Pluralism and Religionero Violence in Michoacán, Mexico, 1873–1877 This chapter examines the so-called religionero rebellion of 1873–1877, an armed Catholic challenge to the anticlerical government of Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada that centred principally in the Mexican state of Michoacán. It explores the meaning of pro-Catholic violence in an (almost) exclusively Catholic nation, undermining long-held assumptions that see the rebellion as a straightforward conflict between Church and State. Far from being simple foot soldiers of the intransigent Pope Pius  IX, the religioneros in fact operated outside the bounds of civic dissent prescribed by the ultramon- tane Mexican hierarchy, often even coming to blows with more well-heeled Catholic reformers in Michoacán’s many rural parishes. This chapter shows that if the religionero rebellion constituted a phase of »Catholic violence«, then it primarily aimed at preserving, and indeed rescuing, a certain kind of Catholicism that was both imperilled by the liberal ban on public religion and falling out of favour with Mexico’s Catholic elite.