of this exposition, which has no other purpose than to defend the
honor of the religious institutes and demonstrate the necessity of
supporting and invigorating their ministry, if they are to continue
their noble and patriotic mission in the archipelago. We do not
intend to mix in politics, however much we may have as much or more
right than any society or individual to speak of these things. But
indeed we must be the defenders of the rights of the Church, and of
the regular clergy. We are indeed under obligations to watch over
Spanish interests, which are not at variance with, but perfectly
amalgamated with religious interests.
What the orders need and claim. As religious then, and as Spaniards,
we address the government, and without circumlocutions or subterfuge
(for these are not the times for paraphrases and euphemisms which
cloak the truth), we believe that we can tell the government that if
the interests of Spanish domination in the archipelago have incurred
and are incurring so serious danger of shipwreck, it is because they
have rather been, and are, profoundly combative of the interests of
religion; and that if the revolutionists have succeeded in making
themselves heard by a multitude of natives, it is because they have
been taught, before and during the ingrate rebellion, to despise and
even to persecute the religious who taught them a doctrine of peace
and obedience. He who does not see this, suffers great blindness,
or it is an obvious sign that he is infected with the terrible evil
that has brought so dire consequences to Filipinas. He who closes his
ears to the lessons of Providence--sorrowful, but indeed healthful
lessons--and believes that it is possible to restore order here and
establish a prosperous and tranquil progress without strengthening
religious influences, is not far from the separatist camp, or shows
that he is unable to learn from great social catastrophes.
It is not sufficient for that purpose to recognize the need of morality
and of religion. One must recognize them in all their integrity and
purity, such as our holy Mother, the Church, makes them known. It is
not sufficient to talk to the people of the great doctrines of the
Crucified, and instruct them not to attempt to attack the legitimate
interests of Catholicism--vagaries that so very often cover mischievous
and pharisaical intentions, in order afterward, under pretext of
abuses, to tell them by word and deed, not to listen to the priests
who preach those doctrines to them and inculcate in them respect
for those interests. If one would attempt to effectively establish
the peace of the archipelago upon a firm base, he must support in
toto and in solido the mission of the religious corporations, so that
they may be fruitful in the proportion that these inhabitants demand,
who are still affectionate to the faith and to civilization, and so
that the natives may be strengthened in the solid conviction that
they are obliged to obey and respect España, their true fatherland in
the social and civic order, by bonds of conscience and not by human
considerations which are always unstable and shifting.
Consequently, we regulars who have more than sufficient reasons to
recognize to their full extent the evils that affect the archipelago,
so beloved by us, and who have been for some time experiencing the fact
that, far from religious action being strengthened, it is restricted
and opposed in various ways, do not waver in telling the government
with blunt frankness that, if it do not consent to give that support,
daily more necessary, to the Church, the social disturbance of the
country will continue to increase daily, and that by not applying
any remedy to that evil, the stay here of the religious is becoming
morally impossible.
Of what use is it for us to force ourselves to fulfil our
religio-patriotic duties, if others take it upon themselves to destroy
that labor on the instant; if they, by methods that flatter evil
passions so greatly, gain the favor of the same people whom we have
taught to be docile and submissive, by saying to them continually that
they should pay no attention to us? Would it suffice, peradventure,
to preach respect to property, if, at the same time, there were no
laws that protected it and public force that effectively restrained
those covetous of another? Would any professor be assured of the
effects of his teaching, whose pupils were to be told by respectable
persons or through vexatious methods, as they left the lecture room,
to forget or despise the lessons of their masters? Then in like case
do we find ourselves in Filipinas.
We do not want, your Excellency, temporal honors or dignities, which
we have renounced by choosing for our profession a life hidden in
Jesus Christ. We do not belong to those who, in whatever they do,
think immediately, even when deserving them, of recompenses and
decorations. We do not desire, as our enemies believe (who judge us,
perhaps, from themselves), to preponderate in the civil government
and administration of the villages, nor even at least to continue our
slight official intervention assigned to us in certain secular matters
by law and tradition. If one desires to strip the parish priest or
the missionary of all administrative, gubernatorial, and economic
functions, in which, without us ever claiming it, yea, ever, the
secular authority has come to solicit our modest cooperation, let it
be done at a seasonable time. Those who adopt such an inclination will
see what is most advisable for the exalted interests of the fatherland;
but from them and not from us, who have ever (even enduring because
of that intervention, annoyances, censures, and persecutions, and
considering it a true burden) been docile auxiliaries of the civil
authority, will be demanded the responsibility of the consequences
that may be occasioned by so far-reaching a measure.
We have come to the islands to preach and to preserve the Christian
faith, and to instruct these natives with the celestial food of the
sacraments and the maxims of the gospel; to prove that the principal
intent of España, on incorporating this territory with its crown,
was to christianize and civilize the natives. We have not come to
become alcaldes, governors, judges, military men, agriculturists,
tradesmen, or merchants; although the concord and fast union that
should prevail between the Church and State be granted, and the fact
that we constitute here the only social Spanish institution, never
have we refused to contribute with our might as good patriots and
submissive vassals to whatever has been demanded of us, and which
we have been able to perform, without dishonor to our priestly and
religious character.
What they as Catholic institutions contradict. All who have written
upon Filipinas consider the benefit that the country, and very chiefly
the Spanish dominion, has obtained, from that system in which the
parish priest and the missionary were the intermediary, more or
less direct, between the public authorities and the mass of the
Filipino population. It does not belong to us to demonstrate that,
for well does the history of this archipelago show it, and it is
being told in eloquent, although tragic voices by the present fact,
with the deplorable consequences that España is feeling, and to which
it has been guided by a senseless and suicidal propaganda against
the religious orders. What we have to say at present is, that if the
civil authority be not most diligently attentive to the maintenance,
encouragement, and guaranty of religion and morality in the islands,
as it must be through its solemn promise contracted before the supreme
pontiffs and before Christian Europe, in accordance with the teachings
and precepts of our most holy Mother, the Church; if it do not oppose
a strong wall to the avalanche of insults, taunts, and systematic
opposition to the religious of Filipinas, which is coming down upon
the peninsula and the archipelago; if it do not prosecute the secret
societies with the firmness of a foreseeing government; if it do
not cause us to be respected and held as our quality as priests and
Spanish corporations demand, in public and in private, in all the
spheres of the social order, in whatever concerns España and its
agents, repelling every project that in one way or another attempts
to remove our prestige and to lessen our reputation, hindering the
fruit of our labors: there is no suitable and meritorious way--and we
say it with profoundest grief--in which we can continue in the islands.
We cannot be less, your Excellency, in our order, than military men,
to whom their profession is an honor and exaltation, as well as an
exaction; less than the class of administrative functionaries whose
rights and prerogatives are defended and guaranteed by the State; less
than the mercantile and industrial companies and undertakings, who are
considered and protected as impelling elements of public wealth; less
than legal, medicinal, and other professional--scientific, artistic,
or mechanical--associations, which are honored and respected in every
well-organized society. We believe, and this belief is not at all
exaggerated, that, as Catholic institutions, we have a right to all
the honors, exemptions, and privileges, that the Christian Church and
State, and the laws--in accordance with which the religious orders
were established in Filipinas--extend to ecclesiastical persons and
corporations, and especially to the regulars; and that as Spanish
institutions, we ought to have the same consideration as the other
entities that have arisen and exist under the protection of the flag
of the fatherland.
As Catholic institutions, we must, with all the energy of our soul,
repel, as contrary to the imprescriptible and supreme laws of the
true and the good, and to the original laws of the Church, freedom of
worship, and the other fatal and false liberties that are the offspring
of the thought, of the press, and of association, which certain men
are trying to bring to this archipelago, and which conflict with the
most rudimentary duties of the patronage that España exercises here,
as is clearly set forth in various places in the Recopilación de
Indias. In like manner do we repel, inasmuch as it contradicts the
rights of the Church, the pretended secularization of education, in
accordance with what we are taught in propositions 45, 47, and 48,
[208] of the Syllabus, and which are obligatory on all Catholics,
and very especially on Christian princes and governments. Contrary
to those rights, and entirely abusive and tyrannical, would be every
measure that the secular power might try to adopt in regard to the
religious orders of the archipelago: whether in meddling with their
regular regimen and discipline; whether in secularizing them; whether
in disentailing their property, or fettering their free disposition
of the same; whether in freeing their members from their obedience;
whether in depriving them of the honors or privileges which they
possess according to the canons, the laws of the Indias, and Christian
common law, as is expressed in proposition 53 of the above-mentioned
Syllabus. [209] Every law that attempts to suppress, diminish, or
weaken the sacred laws of personal, royal, or local ecclesiastical
immunity is contrary to the sacred rules of the Church. Also contrary
to the Church, and smacking of the heresies of Wickliffe and Luther,
is every ordinance that denies the clergy the right to the stipends
and fees that are due them from their holy ministry, and that
tries to meddle with matters of parochial fees, a thing that is
peculiar to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It is contrary to the
honor and sanctity of the religious estate to suppose it incapable
of exercising the care of souls, and to say that, in governing the
parishes, we violated the canons, when in exact accordance with them,
we christianized this country, and since have continued to minister
it. It is vexatious to the regular clergy, and opposed to the rights
legitimately acquired, for the civil authority to attempt to despoil
the religious corporations of the ministries and missions founded and
ruled by them, under the protection of the Leyes de Indias and the
sovereign ordinances of the apostolic see. Incompatible with the vow
of obedience that binds every religious, is the complete subjection
of the individuals of the regular clergy who discharge the care of
souls to the authority of the diocesan, depriving his prelate of
the attributes that he possesses over his subjects; and the bishop
cannot be allowed, to the loss or detriment of the rights of the
regular superior to suppress the regular curacies at his pleasure,
since the ministries depend immediately on the corporation which
appoints those religious who are to fulfil the duties of them.
The need of keeping intact the authority of the regular prelate over
his curas and missionaries. No one is ignorant that the religious
corporations of the archipelago are communities composed in their vast
majority of parish priests and missionaries. If that be so, and it must
be so, in order that the orders fulfil the peculiar end for which they
came to Filipinas, how could the jurisdiction of the regular prelate
he maintained, if the attributes that he has received from the holy
see, the only immediate authority to which the regulars are subject,
for the government of his subjects, of whatever class they be, be
lessened? By pontifical laws, the religious assigned to the doctrinas
and missions are considered absolutely as viventes intra claustra,
which signifies that they are governed by their peculiar superiors,
rights, and attributes, which are binding on every subject strictly
conventual. If it were not so, the individual life would be established
to a greater or less extent in the orders; their communal bonds would
disappear; the regular prelates would become mere figureheads; and the
religious corporations, losing the internal discipline that gives them
so much vigor and strength, would be converted into associations of
priests [presbiteros], who although they pronounced religious vows one
day, would afterwards have no other bonds with their superiors than
the corporative habit and name, and too, perchance, the possession
of the open door in order to take refuge in the convent whence they
went out, whenever they so desired or the bishop ordered it.
The action of the regular prelate over the curas and missionaries of
his order must be so active, immediate, energetic, and universal,
that he can change, remove, or transfer them, or give them another
occupation and appointment, and his authority over them must remain in
everything as powerful as if it were a question of the last one of the
conventual religious. That is required by the regular discipline; that
is demanded by the vow of obedience. In proportion as the attempt is
made with the individual to restrict or weaken the jurisdiction of the
order, it is equivalent to jesting at the intention of us religious,
who do not profess to be subjects of the bishop, but only to occupy
ourselves in the business of religion which our prelates assign us;
it is equivalent to disnaturalizing the religious corporations, and
consequently, to destroying them, the very thing that the separatists
are attempting.
Such a thing will not happen, we are sure; for the moment that a law
freeing the parish priests and missionaries from subordination to their
prelate, or lessening or restricting the latter's power, is dictated,
no religious, by bonds of conscience, would dare to continue at the
head of his parish or mission, and all would retire to their convents
at Manila. Such a thing will not happen, for the bishops themselves
would be energetically opposed to it, and would confess, as they
do, that precisely because the vast majority of their parish clergy
are regulars, their clergy live so morally and apply themselves so
assiduously to their ministry, and that scarcely would they find that
in secular priests [presbiteros] or in regulars not fully subject to
their order, and that they are consequently interested, through love
of their flock, in having the parish ministries of the archipelago
continue to be ruled by the same laws as hitherto. And such a thing
will not happen, we say, because the holy see, jealous guardian of
the interests of Christianity in the islands, not less than of the
prestige of the regulars, will not permit it; while, at the last,
the government would be placed in the dilemma, namely, that either
a suitable and sufficient personnel be proposed to it, which might
replace the religious corporations of Filipinas in a stable and worthy
manner, or, on the contrary, that the latter continue discharging
their actual duties, without the least diminution of the jurisdiction
of their respective regular prelates.
España's obligation to send ministers of the Catholic religion to these
islands and to solidly guaranty that religion. Such a thing will not
happen finally, for the government of the country can never forget
(regarding this point and the others with which the present exposition
is concerned) the will of Isabel the Catholic, the fundamental and
capital law of these dominions, by which the government is obliged
to send here prelates and religious and other learned and austere
persons of God, in order to instruct their inhabitants in the Catholic
faith, and to instruct and teach them good morals; for nothing must
be desired ahead of the publication and extension of the evangelical
law, and the conversion and conservation of the Indians in the holy
Catholic faith. "Inasmuch as we are directing our thought and care
to this as our chief aim, we order, and to the extent we may, charge
the members of our Council of Indias that laying aside every other
consideration of our profit and interest, they hold especially in
mind the matters of the conversion and instruction, and above all
that they be watchful and occupy themselves with all their might and
understanding in providing and appointing ministers sufficient for it,
and take all the other measures necessary so that the Indians and
natives may be converted and conserved in the knowledge of God our
Lord, the honor and praise of his holy name, so that, we fulfilling
this duty which so tightly binds us and which we so desire to satisfy,
the members of the said Council may discharge their consciences,
since we have discharged ours with them." (Law i, tít. i, book ii
and law viii, tít. ii, book ii of Recopilación de Indias.)
The Council of Ministers together with the ministry of the colonies
[210] has been substituted for the Council of Indias, of whose devotion
and zeal in fulfilling the fundamental duties of their trust, we
cannot harbor the least doubt.
Very expressive also to the question in hand is law lxv, tít. xiv,
book i of the same Recopilación. "We order the viceroys, presidents,
auditors, governors, and other justices of the Indias, to give all
the protection necessary for that service to the religious of the
orders resident in those provinces and occupied in the conversion
and instruction of the natives, to our entire satisfaction, by which
God has been, and is, served, and the natives much benefited, and to
honor them greatly, and encourage them to continue, and do the same,
and more, if possible, as we expect from their persons and goodness."
Words of the instructions to Legaspi; of the laws of Partìdas;
[211] of Felipe II. Thus was it commanded scores of times to the
authorities of these islands, and in harmony with that legislation,
in the instructions to the great Legaspi, it is expressly stated:
"You shall have special care in all the negotiations that you shall
have with the natives of those districts to have with you some of
the religious, both in order to make use of their good counsel,
and so that the natives may recognize and understand the great
consideration in which you hold them; for seeing that and the great
reverence given them by the soldiers, they will also come to respect
them. That will be very important, so that, when the religious impart
to them the matters pertaining to our holy Catholic faith, they may
give them full credit; since you know that his Majesty's chiefest end
is the salvation of the souls of those infidels. For that purpose,
in whatever district, you shall take particular care to aid the said
religious ... so that, having learned the language, they may labor
to bring the natives to the knowledge of our holy Catholic faith,
convert them to it, and reduce them to the obedience and friendship
of his Majesty." (Colec. de Doc. Inéd. de Ultramar, ii, p. 188.) [212]
That is the genuinely Spanish spirit, the glory of the human race,
and especially of Christianity, which caused our legislators to write
in the Partidas (Partida i, tít. vi, law lxii, and tít. xi): "Laymen
must honor and regard the clergy greatly, each one according to his
rank and his dignity: firstly, because they are mediators between God
and them; secondly, because by honoring them, they honor Holy Church,
whose servants they are, and honor the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who is their head, for they are called Christians. And this honor
and this regard must be shown in three ways; in speech; in deed;
and in counsel." "The churches of the emperors, kings, and other
seigniors of the countries, have great privileges and liberties;
and these were very rightfully [given them], for the things of God
should have greater honor than those of men."
That is the spirit that was expressed by the mouth of Felipe II when
he answered those who proposed to him the abandonment of these islands,
in consideration of the few resources that the public treasury derived
from them: "For the conversion of only one soul of those there,
I would give all the treasures of the Indias, and were they not
sufficient I would give most willingly whatever España yields. Under
no consideration shall I abandon or discontinue to send preachers and
ministers to give the light of the holy gospel to all and whatever
provinces may be discovered, however poor, rude, and barren they may
be, for the holy apostolic see has given to us and to our heirs the
duty possessed by the apostles of publishing and preaching the gospel,
which must be spread there and into an infinite number of kingdoms,
taking them from the power of devils and giving them to know the true
God, without any hope of temporal blessings."
Duties of the government and of others in regard to religious
interests in the islands. Consequently, those offenses that should
be most prosecuted in Filipinas, and against which the government
should prove especially active, are offenses against religion and
against ecclesiastical persons, as such offenses are those which
wound the greatest social welfare, and are most directly opposed to
the fundamental obligation that España contracted on incorporating
these islands with its crown. Hence, masonry, an anti-Catholic and
anti-national society, ought not to be permitted, but punished
severely; every propaganda against the dogmas, precepts, and
institutions of our holy Mother, the Church, ought to be proscribed;
outrages against the clergy and religious ought to be punished with
greater rigor than when committed against any other class of persons,
giving such outrages the character of sacrilege, which they positively
possess; all, from the governor-general to the lowest dependent of
the State, ought to exert themselves to demonstrate by their word
and example, in public and in private, and without those conventional
exteriorities of pure social form (a Catholicism that becomes naught
but mere observance and courtesy, and which, unfortunately, abounds
so widely), that they love and respect the Catholic religion, and
that they esteem more the duties toward God and toward His holy
Church that proceed from it, than any other duty and obligation,
however exalted and respectable may be the institution that imposes it.