The new laws will also restore the clergy's rights to vote and criticize the Government, legalize the presence of foreign priests and ministers, and force religious officials to pay income tax. Convents and monasteries that have existed in defiance of legal prohibitions will now be allowed formally.

In a country that according to the last census is 91 percent Catholic and that is just embarking on major educational reforms, the changes may have their most immediate effect in a surge of religious schools.

The new legal framework is also likely to usher in a new era of competition between the Catholic Church and Protestant sects that have greatly expanded in Latin America over the last decade, pushing over the Guatemalan border into southern Mexico. Under the new laws, the struggle for Mexican souls may well be fought in the news media; all religious groups will have free access to radio, television and the press for the first time.

The proposed modification of five constitutional articles dealing with religious matters seeks to close a void between the laws passed by triumphant but insecure revolutionaries and the realities of a nation rushing to modernize and integrate its economy with the rest of the world. It is a gap that until now has been filled largely by myth and by legends of a mistrustful nationalism, which Mr. Salinas has also set out to transform.

To a large extent, the new framework will merely legalize the highly stylized and somewhat theatrical dynamic of church-state relations that has evolved since a liberal President, Emilio Portes Gil, promised Catholic hierarchs in 1929 that he would not enforce the Constitution if they in turn muffled their attacks against the Government.