Hell seems ever more liable to bust loose in western Mexico’s Michoacan state, with heavily armed civilians squaring off against feared meth-producing gangsters who’ve had the run of rural hamlets and towns for years. The self-defense militias, at least some of them accused of connivance with criminal rivals of the local Knights Templar gang, have been working to encircle the Templar-dominated city of Apatzingan since last summer.

Roman Catholic prelates in Michoacan state at last have drawn a line against local gangsters, and the officials nurturing them, further entangling what already was one of Mexico's more intractable knots of violence. But most of the Church hierarchy still seems reluctant to take a strong stand. The bishops have jumped in as the homegrown Knights Templar gang squares off against civilian militias, rival gangsters and thousands of federal troops across the Pacific Coast state.