Another Viewpoint

I found a different viewpoint on the Christero rebellion and "For Greater Glory" here (http://www.austinchronicle.com/postmarks/2012-06-05/1335868/). Can anyone comment on the points this author raises? (Note: I am NOT a historian. I merely present this critique, I do not necessarily endorse it, because I--like, I suspect, most non-Chicano Americans--know very little about the events in question myself.)

Dear Editor,
The recent review of For Greater Glory [Film Listings, June 1], a film about the Cristero religious rebellion in Western Mexico in the late Twenties, contained several significant inaccuracies. I do not fault the reviewer in the slightest. No doubt the film itself presents myth as fact.
The 1926 laws that provoked the rebellion did not prohibit Catholicism. What the president did, in addition to declaring that existing laws would be enforced, was to charge municipal authorities with administering churches, and require priests to register with the government. Certainly, the government intended to exercise more control over the Catholic Church, a long-cherished dream of Mexican reform movements. But it did not prohibit Catholicism or its priests. The Mexican bishops decided that priests would no longer officiate within local church buildings, in effect closing them. Enrique Gorostieta did take the uncoordinated guerrilla bands that subsequently rose in arms and made them into an effective military force, but his previous "war heroism" consistented largely of fighting on behalf of the military dictatorship that toppled an elected government in 1913. Most historians consider Ambassador Dwight Morrow to have been genuinely interested in peace. He brought together the bishops who had strong misgivings about the rebellion and had the support of the Vatican with a new president, appointed because the elected one had been assassinated by the Cristeros.
The Cristeros took up arms first, with riots, assassinations, and extrajudicial executions. There is no doubt that the government responded with extreme force, including torture, assassination, and concentration camps.
But I knew families while in Mexico who had tales of the Cristeros. A grandfather hanged for refusing to give them food. A teenage girl hunted for having a government family. A 10-year-old whose Cristero father refused to let them take his son to be a soldier. A priest who refused to intervene in the execution of a childhood friend, whose crime was to work for the government before the Cristeros took up arms.
Yes, the rebels rose in arms because they believed their beliefs were threatened. And there is no question that the government intended to weaken the church. But by choosing to take up arms and use them against innocent people, the Cristeros betrayed the faith that they claimed to serve. Not greater glory. Not lesser glory. No glory at all.
Nick Dauster