[8] President Álvaro Obregón and his successor Calles, as well as other politicians, wanted the revolutionary government to restrict and terminate the Catholic Church in Mexico.
[1]: 49, 52 [9]: 536, 358 In February 1925, armed intruders calling themselves the "Knights of the Order of Guadalupe" occupied the church of María de la Soledad in Mexico City where José Joaquín Pérez Budar [es], a Freemason and former Catholic priest, proclaimed himself the future patriarch of a new national church;[c] Parishioners attacked the interlopers and rioted the next day; similar riots were incited when other churches in Mexico were occupied by armed intruders that month.
[1]: 53–54 Official favoritism of a national church enraged revolutionaries who saw this as a "violation of state laicidad" with potential to cause division in the revolution, so Calles stopped his support of ICAM after about 3 months.
[7]: 28 In 1927, López Sierra established an ICAM church in San Antonio, Texas,[2][f] where Archbishop Arthur Jerome Drossaerts, of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio, called the cismáticos (Spanish for schismatics) "designing proselytizers of the sects supported by Calles and the Mexican government, that archenemy of all Christianity;"[6] and in 1929, López Valdes established an ICAM church in Los Angeles, California.
[2] The ICAM supports clerical marriage, rituals in the vernacular, Communion under both kinds, individual Biblical interpretation, veneration of saints and Mary the mother of Jesus, but opposed the Roman Catholic dogma of papal infallibility, denied eternal damnation, rejected the sacrament of Penance, and had an "experimental commitment to liturgical innovation".
[9]: 536 When the Calles Law took effect in July 1926, the Catholic Church suspended all public worship and within days the Cristero rebellion began.
[g] Ramirez notes that ICAM subsisted through the Cristero rebellion, spread to the southern United States, and survived the end of the Calles government.
[2][6]: 31 Instead of spreading ICAM, according to Ramirez, Pérez's subordinates coveted his position of patriarch and devised ecclesial intrigues.