Chapter 20

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 asviventes 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 oftheir 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 thatlaying aside every other considerationof our profit and interest, they hold especially in mind the mattersof 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 ofRecopilación de Indias.)The Council of Ministers together with the ministry of the colonies32has 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 sameRecopilación. “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;33of Felipe II. Thus was it commandedscores 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.)34That is the genuinely Spanish spirit, the glory of the human race, and especially of Christianity, which caused our legislators to write in thePartidas(Partidai, 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, becausethey 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 shouldprove 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.Hence the government of the nation and exalted authorities must be the first who ought to destroy, not only in their official, but in their private acts, and as politicians, authors, governmentemployees, military men, in the different orders of social life, the ridiculous and contemptuous idea that free thought has sown against priests and religious, permittingthemselves to talk of them in a tone that honors the clergy so little, and which when known by the elements of other inferior social classes, cause respect to the Catholic priest to become weakened daily, many judging that the religion of officials is frequently nothing more than a social hypocrisy and a practice of pure political convenience. Hence the government ought to very carefully see that all its personnel in the archipelago be sincere and earnest Catholics, in order that the sad spectacle may not be again seen, that we have so often and so prodigally witnessed, by which the chief ones, in opposing the apostolic labor of the religious corporations, are the very ones, who, inasmuch as they are functionaries of a Catholic state, ought to be those who support and strengthen it the most. Hence every association, assembly, or undertaking which is trying to sow here anti-religious or anti-clerical ideas, under any color or pretext, even the exercise of political rights, ought to be prevented at all hazards from having any representation or branch in these islands; and the previous censorship over every kind of book, pamphlet, and engraving that comes from outside, and over those which shall be published here, should be restored, or better said, strengthened. Hence, the close union of all the peninsular element here resident becomes more necessary, so that, all united for the protection of our divine religion, by all respected and obeyed, we may resist the enemies of the fatherland with greater force; may not by our discords give the rebel camp opportunity to gain strength; and as far as possible, may succeed in elevating the moral prestige, today, unfortunately fallen so low. Hence, likewise, is thegreat necessity of the disappearance in gubernatorial circles of an erroneous idea, most fatal and extremely disrespectful to the orders, which, propagated by sectarian spirits or by bad or lukewarm Catholics, seems now to be a postulate of many politicians in Madrid, and of the majority of peninsulars who come to this archipelago.Infamous idea in regard to the importance of the orders and the manner in which they are generally regarded.We refer to the idea which began to spread after the revolution of ’68, which looks upon the religious of Filipinas as an evil necessity, as an archaic institution, with which differences must be composed for reasons of state; as a purely political resource, and a convenience to the nation, which cannot be substituted with others. That infamous idea, manifested at times frankly, and at times with reticence or with insinuations that cut more deeply than a knife, is known by our declared enemies. It is known by the natives of the country who have been in the Peninsula. It is known, because it has been propagated in newspapers and other products of the press that have penetrated the archipelago, by a vast number of natives, who, with having left Filipinas, are notably offended by it. All the peninsulars who make war on us, whether by anti-religious prejudices, by doctrinal compromise, by personal resentment, by flippancy, or by envy (for among all those classes do we have enemies) help to spread and propagate that idea throughout the islands.From that idea many deduce the opinion that we are dragging out in this country an existence of pure compassion and condescension; that we are livinghere, tolerated and as if on alms, instead of honored and respected as any other institution of the mother-country; that in many ways, one would believe that we religious are less and have less value than the military, than the government employes, or than those of other professions and careers; and that with wonderful facility one imputes to us, as to the most abandoned and destitute, the blame for all the evils that afflict the country, governors and other representatives of the government and administration of the islands availing themselves of our name of obliged appeal, in order to evade and shun responsibilities, whenever any calamity comes upon them or whenever there is any unpleasant event to bewail in their conduct. For all, there is indulgence, for all, excuse, for all kindness and the eyes of charity. The epoch is one of adjustment and respect for all manner of extensions, although with the loss of morality and justice. Only in what concerns priests and religious must one look with contemptuous pride, with extreme rigor, and with despotic exaction. The religious has to pay it all; on him must all the blame be cast; to him belong the feelings of anger, the aversions, the censures, the expressions of contempt. We appear, your Excellency, to be only theanima vilis35of the archipelago.It is evident that we, as the priestly and religious class, and as a Spanish corporation, cannot in any manner consent to this humiliating position, which, as private persons, obliged to greater perfection than the generality of Christians, we endure patiently, remembering the words of the apostle “tamquam purgamenta hujus mundi facti sumus omnium peripsemausque adhuc,”36and of which we would not speak if the evil were restricted to one of so many annoyances annexed to our ministry; so much the more as we unfortunately see that that injurious and erroneous idea is greatly injuring our ministry, and is daily causing our influence among the people who are entrusted to us to become lessened, since they are assailed strongly and tenaciously by all the disturbing agents that have caused the insurrection.Respect that they merit as religious and as Spaniards.The religious corporations ought to be greatly honored and distinguished (and it grieves us deeply, your Excellency, to have to speak of these things): firstly, because their individual members are adorned with the priestly character, which is the greatest honor and dignity among Christians that men can have; secondly, because their apostolic mission has here propagated and preserves the splendors of Catholicism. They are priests and they are religious: thus they unite the two devices that inspire the greatest veneration among any society, which feels some needs superior to the material, or those of their proud reason divorced from Jesus Christ.Not less respect do they merit in their character as Spanish entities. Besides being here ministers of the official religion, they are public ecclesiastical persons, recognized by the state. They live under its safeguard, as do the military and civil entities. They have labored, and are laboring, for the fatherland, at least as much as any other class of Spaniards residing in the archipelago. And in the point of intelligence, within their respective profession and of moralityand private and civic virtues, they rise not only collectively, but individually, to so great a height as the class that is considered the most high and reputable in the archipelago.There is one most special reason and one of extraordinary importance which demands that that respect should be sanctioned by the laws and supported by customs, namely, that the religious in his respective duties, becomes, as a general rule, the only peninsular, and, therefore, the only representative of the mother-country in the majority of the Filipino villages. Consequently, Spanish prestige is greatly interested in that he be the object of such considerations and guaranties that these inhabitants far from seeing, as unfortunately they have not a few times seen, that he is despised and humbled, be daily more fortified in the traditional idea that their cura or missionary is, at once the minister of God and the representative of España, a lofty idea that has redounded, and redounds, so greatly to the favor of the mother-country, and says so much in honor of all the Spanish entities.We came to the archipelago through our love to religion and España, and have remained in it more than three centuries, ready to continue here so long as conscience does not dictate the contrary to us. Gross temporal considerations do not move us, nor sentiments of pride and of mere personal dignity. In the fulfilment of our duties, we have striven to attain even sacrifice and by the grace of God, we shall continue the sacrifice. A good proof of this is offered the impartial critic by the present epoch of rebellions and insurrections. The cura and missionaries, in spite of persuasions that they were putting their livesin great danger by the continual plots of the ferocious Katipunan, have steadfastly maintained themselves in their posts, foreseeing that if they abandoned their parishioners, a general rising of the islands was almost certain. This procedure, if not heroic, is sufficiently near it, and has cost us many victims, snatching away our dearest brethren from us, some treacherously assassinated and others immolated by reckless mobs seduced by filibusters and masons. And although this sad sacrifice has seemingly not been bewailed and appreciated, as perhaps it ought to be by the loyal sons of España, we trust that God, the compassionate and generous remunerator of every good deed, will in His infinite mercy, receive it as a propitiation for the evils of this unfortunate country, and will have rewarded the martyrs of religion and of the fatherland.Character and objects of this exposition.May the nation, government, and your Excellency, pardon this slight extension of our sentiments of dignity, offended as religious and as Spaniards. This is not a memorial of merits and services, since we have never solicited applause or recompense, which never constitute the lever of our labors. Neither is it a panegyric, which we are not called upon to make, and which we do not believe is wanting, since the history of the religious corporations of Filipinas detaches itself so patiently and cleanly in all kinds of just and upright progress. It contains some apologetic matter and much of most sensible complaint because of the unjustifiable injuries that almost daily are received by us. It is the weak expression of the profound bitterness that seizes upon us at contemplating and viewing from anear the condition of vast disturbancein which this beautiful portion of the fatherland finds itself. With the utmost respect and submission, laying aside absolutely whatever proceeds from political parties and much more from private persons, it tells the government with Christian simplicity and synthetically that it should adopt and maintain a perfectly logical criterion with regard to the religious corporations of Filipinas; and that, therefore, if it thinks, as is just and decorous, that we, the religious corporations, exercise a most lofty and necessary mission in the archipelago, honorable and worthy of the greatest consideration, of its own accord and without utilitarian considerations and false reasons of state, it so manifest clearly and with nobility, making a beginning by giving a practical example of that in its laws and decrees, and in its instructions to the authorities of these islands, and that it do not allow us to be annoyed or insulted; and so much the more since being weak and helpless, and bound as we are by religious weakness and patience, we have no other means of defense than our right and the protection of the good, and we can never appeal to the means of repression and influence to which we allude in the beginning of this expository statement.But if the government, on the contrary, by an error that we would respect, not without qualifying it, in our humble judgment, as most fatal to the interests of religion and the fatherland, should believe that the religious have terminated their traditional mission here, let it also have the frankness to say so. We shall listen to its resolution calmly. But let it not imagine, in adopting measures which, attaching, although without claiming it, the privileges of the Church, our profession as priests and regulars, and our honor as refined Spaniards, that in practice itmight appear that it was trying to burn one candle to Christ and another to Belial, that it was trying to please masons and Catholics, good patriots and separatists, by placing the orders in a so graceless situation that they might become like the mouthful that was thrown into the jaws of the wild beast in order to silence its roars for the time being.Synthesis of the same.Such would happen if the secularization of the regular ministries; the secularization of education; the disamortization of the property of the corporations, or the expression of the liberty that belongs to them to enjoy and dispose of them; the declaration of the tolerance of worship; the establishment of civil marriage; the permission of every kind of association; and the liberty of the press became law. Such would happen, in what more directly concerns us, if the government continuing here and there its campaign against us, unjustifiable from every point of view, were to show by its acts that it actually conceives that we have been the cause of the insurrection, and that we are opposed to the progress of these islands, and to the unfolding of their legitimate aspirations. Such would happen, if the government, failing to rigorously prosecute secret societies, and to effectively correct the seditious ones who are exciting the ignorant masses of the people against the regulars and against all that is most holy and Spanish in the islands, should desire the religious to continue in their ministries, liable at any moment to be sacrificed, as is the terrible watchword of the sect, and which has already unfortunately occurred, without, perhaps, their having even the consolation that those sacrifices are appreciated.If we religious are to continue to be of use inthe islands to religion and España, no one can have any doubt that it must be by thoroughly guarantying our persons, our prestige, and our ministry, it must be by knowing that the fatherland appreciates and treats us as its sons, and that it must not abandon us as an object of derision to our enemies, and as victims to the rancor of masonry and separatism. Martyrdom does not terrify us, but only honors us, although we do not consider ourselves worthy of so holy an honor: but we do not desire to die as if criminals, enveloped with the censures of friends and enemies, and perhaps, abandoned and despised by those who ought to protect and esteem us.That is the extremely gloomy and graceless situation in which the orders find themselves, especially since the beginning of the Tagárog insurrection, and above all, since the extension of the Katipunan, a situation that threatens to become worse, if the government becomes the echo of the filibusters, of the masons, of the radical elements, which, it seems, have conspired together to give the finishing stroke to the great social-religious edifice, raised in these islands by Catholic España.By that no one should be surprised that we religious, placed in so imminent a peril, desirous of not offering abstracts to the policy of any government, and of avoiding the censure that we are the cause of the evils of the country and the bar to its progress, should choose the abandonment of our ministries, exile, and expatriation, in preference to our continuance in the islands in a situation, which, if prolonged for a longer time, will result as decidedly dishonoring to our class, and would make our permanence in the archipelago unfruitful.We have fulfilled our duty here as good men; such is our firm conviction. Should we go elsewhere, there, by the grace of God, we shall also be able to fulfil our duty. And for that result, the holy see, if contrary to all our just expectations, it cannot succeed in making itself heard by the Spanish nation, will not deny us the opportune permission.Fortunately, we have trust in the noble sentiments and deeply-rooted Catholicism of her Majesty, the queen regent; we trust in the devotion and patriotism of the ministers of the crown; we trust in the sensible opinion shared by the majority of the Spanish people; we trust in the intelligence and spirit of justice of the Catholic minister of the colonies; and we trust that, after listening to the most dignified prelates of these islands, and after taking into consideration the prescriptions of natural and canonical law, the exalted advantages of the fatherland in these regions, and the undeniable services that the religious orders in Filipinas have contributed, no resolution contrary to the teachings and precepts of our holy Mother, the Church, will be adopted, and which is contrary to the prestige of the regular clergy, but that, on the contrary, the Catholic institutions of this archipelago will be once more affirmed and strengthened, as is imposed by both religion and the fatherland.In this confidence, and reiterating our traditional adhesion to the throne, and to its institutions, we conclude, praying God for the prosperity and new progress of the monarchy, for the health of his Majesty, the king, and of her Majesty, the queen regent (whom may God preserve), and for prudence of the Cortes and the government in their resolutions,and very especially for your Excellency, whose life may God preserve many years.37Manila, April 21, 1898. Your Excellency.Fray Manuel Gutierrez, provincial of the Augustinians.Fray Gilberto Martin, commissary-provincial of the Franciscans.Fray Francisco Ayarra, provincial of the Recollects.Fray Cándido Garcia Valles, vice-provincial of the Dominicans.Pio Pí, S.J., superior of the mission of the Society of Jesus.Notice.Because of the impossibility, due to the length of this exposition, of drawing up the copies necessary for the archives of each corporation, it has been agreed by the respective superiors, to print an edition of fifty copies, ten for each corporation, which are destined for the purpose stated above.Collated faithfully with its original, and to be considered throughout as an authentic text. In affirmation of which, as secretary of my corporation and by the order of my prelate, I sign and seal the present copy in Manila, April 21, 1898.Fray Francisco Sadaba Del Carmen, secretary-provincial of the Recollects.38There is a seal that says: “Provincialate of the Recollects.”

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 oftheir 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 thatlaying aside every other considerationof our profit and interest, they hold especially in mind the mattersof 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 ofRecopilación de Indias.)

The Council of Ministers together with the ministry of the colonies32has 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 sameRecopilación. “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;33of Felipe II. Thus was it commandedscores 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.)34

That is the genuinely Spanish spirit, the glory of the human race, and especially of Christianity, which caused our legislators to write in thePartidas(Partidai, 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, becausethey 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 shouldprove 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.

Hence the government of the nation and exalted authorities must be the first who ought to destroy, not only in their official, but in their private acts, and as politicians, authors, governmentemployees, military men, in the different orders of social life, the ridiculous and contemptuous idea that free thought has sown against priests and religious, permittingthemselves to talk of them in a tone that honors the clergy so little, and which when known by the elements of other inferior social classes, cause respect to the Catholic priest to become weakened daily, many judging that the religion of officials is frequently nothing more than a social hypocrisy and a practice of pure political convenience. Hence the government ought to very carefully see that all its personnel in the archipelago be sincere and earnest Catholics, in order that the sad spectacle may not be again seen, that we have so often and so prodigally witnessed, by which the chief ones, in opposing the apostolic labor of the religious corporations, are the very ones, who, inasmuch as they are functionaries of a Catholic state, ought to be those who support and strengthen it the most. Hence every association, assembly, or undertaking which is trying to sow here anti-religious or anti-clerical ideas, under any color or pretext, even the exercise of political rights, ought to be prevented at all hazards from having any representation or branch in these islands; and the previous censorship over every kind of book, pamphlet, and engraving that comes from outside, and over those which shall be published here, should be restored, or better said, strengthened. Hence, the close union of all the peninsular element here resident becomes more necessary, so that, all united for the protection of our divine religion, by all respected and obeyed, we may resist the enemies of the fatherland with greater force; may not by our discords give the rebel camp opportunity to gain strength; and as far as possible, may succeed in elevating the moral prestige, today, unfortunately fallen so low. Hence, likewise, is thegreat necessity of the disappearance in gubernatorial circles of an erroneous idea, most fatal and extremely disrespectful to the orders, which, propagated by sectarian spirits or by bad or lukewarm Catholics, seems now to be a postulate of many politicians in Madrid, and of the majority of peninsulars who come to this archipelago.

Infamous idea in regard to the importance of the orders and the manner in which they are generally regarded.We refer to the idea which began to spread after the revolution of ’68, which looks upon the religious of Filipinas as an evil necessity, as an archaic institution, with which differences must be composed for reasons of state; as a purely political resource, and a convenience to the nation, which cannot be substituted with others. That infamous idea, manifested at times frankly, and at times with reticence or with insinuations that cut more deeply than a knife, is known by our declared enemies. It is known by the natives of the country who have been in the Peninsula. It is known, because it has been propagated in newspapers and other products of the press that have penetrated the archipelago, by a vast number of natives, who, with having left Filipinas, are notably offended by it. All the peninsulars who make war on us, whether by anti-religious prejudices, by doctrinal compromise, by personal resentment, by flippancy, or by envy (for among all those classes do we have enemies) help to spread and propagate that idea throughout the islands.

From that idea many deduce the opinion that we are dragging out in this country an existence of pure compassion and condescension; that we are livinghere, tolerated and as if on alms, instead of honored and respected as any other institution of the mother-country; that in many ways, one would believe that we religious are less and have less value than the military, than the government employes, or than those of other professions and careers; and that with wonderful facility one imputes to us, as to the most abandoned and destitute, the blame for all the evils that afflict the country, governors and other representatives of the government and administration of the islands availing themselves of our name of obliged appeal, in order to evade and shun responsibilities, whenever any calamity comes upon them or whenever there is any unpleasant event to bewail in their conduct. For all, there is indulgence, for all, excuse, for all kindness and the eyes of charity. The epoch is one of adjustment and respect for all manner of extensions, although with the loss of morality and justice. Only in what concerns priests and religious must one look with contemptuous pride, with extreme rigor, and with despotic exaction. The religious has to pay it all; on him must all the blame be cast; to him belong the feelings of anger, the aversions, the censures, the expressions of contempt. We appear, your Excellency, to be only theanima vilis35of the archipelago.

It is evident that we, as the priestly and religious class, and as a Spanish corporation, cannot in any manner consent to this humiliating position, which, as private persons, obliged to greater perfection than the generality of Christians, we endure patiently, remembering the words of the apostle “tamquam purgamenta hujus mundi facti sumus omnium peripsemausque adhuc,”36and of which we would not speak if the evil were restricted to one of so many annoyances annexed to our ministry; so much the more as we unfortunately see that that injurious and erroneous idea is greatly injuring our ministry, and is daily causing our influence among the people who are entrusted to us to become lessened, since they are assailed strongly and tenaciously by all the disturbing agents that have caused the insurrection.

Respect that they merit as religious and as Spaniards.The religious corporations ought to be greatly honored and distinguished (and it grieves us deeply, your Excellency, to have to speak of these things): firstly, because their individual members are adorned with the priestly character, which is the greatest honor and dignity among Christians that men can have; secondly, because their apostolic mission has here propagated and preserves the splendors of Catholicism. They are priests and they are religious: thus they unite the two devices that inspire the greatest veneration among any society, which feels some needs superior to the material, or those of their proud reason divorced from Jesus Christ.

Not less respect do they merit in their character as Spanish entities. Besides being here ministers of the official religion, they are public ecclesiastical persons, recognized by the state. They live under its safeguard, as do the military and civil entities. They have labored, and are laboring, for the fatherland, at least as much as any other class of Spaniards residing in the archipelago. And in the point of intelligence, within their respective profession and of moralityand private and civic virtues, they rise not only collectively, but individually, to so great a height as the class that is considered the most high and reputable in the archipelago.

There is one most special reason and one of extraordinary importance which demands that that respect should be sanctioned by the laws and supported by customs, namely, that the religious in his respective duties, becomes, as a general rule, the only peninsular, and, therefore, the only representative of the mother-country in the majority of the Filipino villages. Consequently, Spanish prestige is greatly interested in that he be the object of such considerations and guaranties that these inhabitants far from seeing, as unfortunately they have not a few times seen, that he is despised and humbled, be daily more fortified in the traditional idea that their cura or missionary is, at once the minister of God and the representative of España, a lofty idea that has redounded, and redounds, so greatly to the favor of the mother-country, and says so much in honor of all the Spanish entities.

We came to the archipelago through our love to religion and España, and have remained in it more than three centuries, ready to continue here so long as conscience does not dictate the contrary to us. Gross temporal considerations do not move us, nor sentiments of pride and of mere personal dignity. In the fulfilment of our duties, we have striven to attain even sacrifice and by the grace of God, we shall continue the sacrifice. A good proof of this is offered the impartial critic by the present epoch of rebellions and insurrections. The cura and missionaries, in spite of persuasions that they were putting their livesin great danger by the continual plots of the ferocious Katipunan, have steadfastly maintained themselves in their posts, foreseeing that if they abandoned their parishioners, a general rising of the islands was almost certain. This procedure, if not heroic, is sufficiently near it, and has cost us many victims, snatching away our dearest brethren from us, some treacherously assassinated and others immolated by reckless mobs seduced by filibusters and masons. And although this sad sacrifice has seemingly not been bewailed and appreciated, as perhaps it ought to be by the loyal sons of España, we trust that God, the compassionate and generous remunerator of every good deed, will in His infinite mercy, receive it as a propitiation for the evils of this unfortunate country, and will have rewarded the martyrs of religion and of the fatherland.

Character and objects of this exposition.May the nation, government, and your Excellency, pardon this slight extension of our sentiments of dignity, offended as religious and as Spaniards. This is not a memorial of merits and services, since we have never solicited applause or recompense, which never constitute the lever of our labors. Neither is it a panegyric, which we are not called upon to make, and which we do not believe is wanting, since the history of the religious corporations of Filipinas detaches itself so patiently and cleanly in all kinds of just and upright progress. It contains some apologetic matter and much of most sensible complaint because of the unjustifiable injuries that almost daily are received by us. It is the weak expression of the profound bitterness that seizes upon us at contemplating and viewing from anear the condition of vast disturbancein which this beautiful portion of the fatherland finds itself. With the utmost respect and submission, laying aside absolutely whatever proceeds from political parties and much more from private persons, it tells the government with Christian simplicity and synthetically that it should adopt and maintain a perfectly logical criterion with regard to the religious corporations of Filipinas; and that, therefore, if it thinks, as is just and decorous, that we, the religious corporations, exercise a most lofty and necessary mission in the archipelago, honorable and worthy of the greatest consideration, of its own accord and without utilitarian considerations and false reasons of state, it so manifest clearly and with nobility, making a beginning by giving a practical example of that in its laws and decrees, and in its instructions to the authorities of these islands, and that it do not allow us to be annoyed or insulted; and so much the more since being weak and helpless, and bound as we are by religious weakness and patience, we have no other means of defense than our right and the protection of the good, and we can never appeal to the means of repression and influence to which we allude in the beginning of this expository statement.

But if the government, on the contrary, by an error that we would respect, not without qualifying it, in our humble judgment, as most fatal to the interests of religion and the fatherland, should believe that the religious have terminated their traditional mission here, let it also have the frankness to say so. We shall listen to its resolution calmly. But let it not imagine, in adopting measures which, attaching, although without claiming it, the privileges of the Church, our profession as priests and regulars, and our honor as refined Spaniards, that in practice itmight appear that it was trying to burn one candle to Christ and another to Belial, that it was trying to please masons and Catholics, good patriots and separatists, by placing the orders in a so graceless situation that they might become like the mouthful that was thrown into the jaws of the wild beast in order to silence its roars for the time being.

Synthesis of the same.Such would happen if the secularization of the regular ministries; the secularization of education; the disamortization of the property of the corporations, or the expression of the liberty that belongs to them to enjoy and dispose of them; the declaration of the tolerance of worship; the establishment of civil marriage; the permission of every kind of association; and the liberty of the press became law. Such would happen, in what more directly concerns us, if the government continuing here and there its campaign against us, unjustifiable from every point of view, were to show by its acts that it actually conceives that we have been the cause of the insurrection, and that we are opposed to the progress of these islands, and to the unfolding of their legitimate aspirations. Such would happen, if the government, failing to rigorously prosecute secret societies, and to effectively correct the seditious ones who are exciting the ignorant masses of the people against the regulars and against all that is most holy and Spanish in the islands, should desire the religious to continue in their ministries, liable at any moment to be sacrificed, as is the terrible watchword of the sect, and which has already unfortunately occurred, without, perhaps, their having even the consolation that those sacrifices are appreciated.

If we religious are to continue to be of use inthe islands to religion and España, no one can have any doubt that it must be by thoroughly guarantying our persons, our prestige, and our ministry, it must be by knowing that the fatherland appreciates and treats us as its sons, and that it must not abandon us as an object of derision to our enemies, and as victims to the rancor of masonry and separatism. Martyrdom does not terrify us, but only honors us, although we do not consider ourselves worthy of so holy an honor: but we do not desire to die as if criminals, enveloped with the censures of friends and enemies, and perhaps, abandoned and despised by those who ought to protect and esteem us.

That is the extremely gloomy and graceless situation in which the orders find themselves, especially since the beginning of the Tagárog insurrection, and above all, since the extension of the Katipunan, a situation that threatens to become worse, if the government becomes the echo of the filibusters, of the masons, of the radical elements, which, it seems, have conspired together to give the finishing stroke to the great social-religious edifice, raised in these islands by Catholic España.

By that no one should be surprised that we religious, placed in so imminent a peril, desirous of not offering abstracts to the policy of any government, and of avoiding the censure that we are the cause of the evils of the country and the bar to its progress, should choose the abandonment of our ministries, exile, and expatriation, in preference to our continuance in the islands in a situation, which, if prolonged for a longer time, will result as decidedly dishonoring to our class, and would make our permanence in the archipelago unfruitful.

We have fulfilled our duty here as good men; such is our firm conviction. Should we go elsewhere, there, by the grace of God, we shall also be able to fulfil our duty. And for that result, the holy see, if contrary to all our just expectations, it cannot succeed in making itself heard by the Spanish nation, will not deny us the opportune permission.

Fortunately, we have trust in the noble sentiments and deeply-rooted Catholicism of her Majesty, the queen regent; we trust in the devotion and patriotism of the ministers of the crown; we trust in the sensible opinion shared by the majority of the Spanish people; we trust in the intelligence and spirit of justice of the Catholic minister of the colonies; and we trust that, after listening to the most dignified prelates of these islands, and after taking into consideration the prescriptions of natural and canonical law, the exalted advantages of the fatherland in these regions, and the undeniable services that the religious orders in Filipinas have contributed, no resolution contrary to the teachings and precepts of our holy Mother, the Church, will be adopted, and which is contrary to the prestige of the regular clergy, but that, on the contrary, the Catholic institutions of this archipelago will be once more affirmed and strengthened, as is imposed by both religion and the fatherland.

In this confidence, and reiterating our traditional adhesion to the throne, and to its institutions, we conclude, praying God for the prosperity and new progress of the monarchy, for the health of his Majesty, the king, and of her Majesty, the queen regent (whom may God preserve), and for prudence of the Cortes and the government in their resolutions,and very especially for your Excellency, whose life may God preserve many years.37

Manila, April 21, 1898. Your Excellency.

Fray Manuel Gutierrez, provincial of the Augustinians.

Fray Gilberto Martin, commissary-provincial of the Franciscans.

Fray Francisco Ayarra, provincial of the Recollects.

Fray Cándido Garcia Valles, vice-provincial of the Dominicans.

Pio Pí, S.J., superior of the mission of the Society of Jesus.

Notice.Because of the impossibility, due to the length of this exposition, of drawing up the copies necessary for the archives of each corporation, it has been agreed by the respective superiors, to print an edition of fifty copies, ten for each corporation, which are destined for the purpose stated above.

Collated faithfully with its original, and to be considered throughout as an authentic text. In affirmation of which, as secretary of my corporation and by the order of my prelate, I sign and seal the present copy in Manila, April 21, 1898.

Fray Francisco Sadaba Del Carmen, secretary-provincial of the Recollects.38

There is a seal that says: “Provincialate of the Recollects.”

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