A recent traveller designates the Philippines as the birthplace of typhoons, the home of earthquakes,—epithets undoubtedly strong yet well deserved; and typhoons at certain seasons of the year, with earthquakes at uncertain periods, when taken together with the torrid heat, trying at all seasons, and the malaria fruitful of fevers, make these islands of the Eastern seas, which otherwise would be a veritable Paradise upon earth, an undesirable place of abode to the average European, unless, indeed, he is attracted thither by the greed of gain or by the nobler desire of missionary enterprise.

For Nature, bountiful there almost to prodigality, revelling in all the luxuriance of tropical [8]vegetation, has always at hand, as a set-off to her gifts, terrible manifestations of her power. The seventeenth-century navigator, William Dampier, in his own quaint and amusing way, describes how the natives and the Spanish colonists of Manila strove to guard against the double danger of earthquakes and typhoons, and how they both failed ignominiously. The Spaniards built strong stone houses, but the earthquake made light of them, and shook them so violently that the terrified inmates would rush out of doors to save their lives; while the natives from their frail bamboo dwellings, which were perched on high poles, placidly contemplated their discomfiture. All that the earthquake meant to them was a gentle swaying from side to side. But the Spaniards had their turn when the fierce typhoon blew, against which their thick walls were proof. Then, from the security of their houses, could they view, with a certain grim satisfaction, the huts of the natives swaying every minute more violently in the wind, till, one by one, they toppled over—each an indescribable heap of poles, mats, household utensils, and human beings.

By way of general description it may be said that the Philippine Archipelago consists of between one and two thousand islands; two of which, Luzon and Mindanao, are much larger than Ireland, while the rest vary in size down to mere islets, rocks, and reefs. Altogether the islands [9]stretch from north to south a distance as great as from the north of England to the south of Italy. The soil is extremely rich, and easily cultivated; vast forests abound, containing valuable timber; and the mineral resources, up to the present undeveloped, are apt to prove a sure source of income under modern methods of working.

But what concerns us most in this inquiry is the character of the inhabitants. The population, which is variously estimated at from eight to ten millions, is made up of more than eighty distinct tribes, which nearly all belong to the Malay race. There are still to be found in some of the islands, and principally in the mountainous districts, the remnants of the aboriginal inhabitants, usually called Negritos. These are of a distinctively inferior type, are rapidly diminishing in numbers, and seem to many observers incapable of civilization. Our only concern therefore is with the Malays, who form the vast bulk of the population, and have in the course of time been nearly all converted to Christianity. Nearly seven million Christians are counted among them; while the unconverted pagans, together with the Moros, or Malay Mohammedans, of Mindanao and the Sulu islands, are not a million in number.

Christianity has effected a wonderful transformation in the character of the people, softening and refining it, as we may judge by the contrast presented by their cruel and bloodthirsty neighbors [10]in Mindanao and the Sulu group, who, nevertheless, belong to the same race, and whose characteristics they must originally have shared. Travellers have not sufficiently dwelt on this important point. They note that the civilized native is self-respecting and self-constrained to a remarkable degree, patient under misfortune, and forbearing under provocation. He is a kind father and a dutiful son. His relatives are never left in want, but are welcome to share the best his house affords, to the end of their days. Unfortunately for himself, he is a happy-go-lucky fellow, delighting in cock-fighting and games of chance, and naturally indolent, his wants being so few and simple. He is a born musician, genial, sociable, loving to dance, sing, and make merry among his companions. His wife is allowed a degree of liberty hardly equalled in any other Eastern country, a liberty she rarely abuses. She is the financier of the family, and the husband consults her when making a bargain. She does her share of the work; but it is not more than her just share, and she is not overburdened with labor. Hospitality is cheerful and open-handed, and the traveller is welcomed to the hut of the native with cordiality. The houses of the natives are kept neat, and are models of cleanliness, and the natives also keep themselves extremely clean. They are practical and fervent Catholics. At the vesper Angelus bell “there is always a pretty scene. An instant hush comes over the busy village. [11]In each house father, mother, and children fall on their knees before the image or picture of some saint, and repeat their prayers. The devotions over, each child kisses the hand of his father and his mother, at the same time wishing them good evening. He then makes an obeisance to each of his brothers and sisters, as well as to each guest who happens to be present, repeating his salutation with each funny bow. Host and hostess also greet one in the same way; and in remote places, where white men are a rarity, the little tots often kneel to kiss one’s hand.” (“The Philippine Islands and their People,” by Dean C. Worcester.)

In sharp contrast to the happy, contented, and peaceful character of the Christian native, is his southern neighbor of the same blood, the fanatical Moro. Mohammedanism has accentuated rather than softened the underlying fierceness of the Malay; as it gives him a religious sanction to cruelty, treachery, murder, pillage, and piracy when directed against the hated Christian. Inhuman and cold-blooded cruelty is the great characteristic of the Moro, who will calmly cut down a slave merely to try the edge of a new weapon. For two centuries and a half the Moros organized piratical expeditions against the northern islands. The coming of the dreaded fleet of war-praus was looked forward to as an annual event; and while the southwest monsoon was blowing, vigilant sentinels were on the lookout night and day from the watch-towers [12]with which every village was provided. The introduction of modern artillery and quick-firing guns at last turned the scales in favor of the Spaniards, and the piratical expeditions are now a thing of the past. All Christians, however, living near the Moros must still carry their lives in their hands, owing to the juramentados. A juramentado is a man who takes an oath to die killing Christians. The more Christians he kills, the higher place of course he is to get in heaven, especially if he loses his own life in the holy work. He dresses in white, shaves his eyebrows, conceals a weapon under his clothing, and then seizing a favorable opportunity, runs amuck, killing without mercy men, women, and children. Of course he gets killed himself in the end, but sometimes not until he has made himself accountable for a great number of deaths.

Though Magellan discovered the Archipelago in 1521, no serious attempt to take possession of it was made till 1565, when an expedition of four hundred soldiers and sailors was fitted out by Philip II., and placed under the leadership of Miguel Lopez de Legaspi. As Philip was inspired by religious zeal, and his principal and perhaps only object was to spread the light of the Gospel, six Augustinian friars accompanied the expedition. We may say with truth that it was these missionaries, and the others who followed in rapid succession, who conquered the Archipelago [13]for Spain. There was no conquest in the strict sense of the term. The Spaniards in most places simply showed themselves to the natives; and the religious, who accompanied them, persuaded the untutored savages to submit to the King of Spain, through whom they would obtain the two-fold blessing of civilization and Christianity. The retention of these rich and fertile islands, so great a source of revenue to the mother-country, was on the whole a very easy task. The religious Orders planted themselves firmly in the colony, and spread themselves everywhere, winning the natives to Christ, keeping them also in loyal obedience to that great European power by whose means the missionaries had been sent to them. They were thus the real bulwarks of Spanish power there, which was kept up rather by gentle persuasion than by force of arms. Mr. Mac Macking, a Scotch Protestant who spent some years there, says: “The warriors who gained them over to Spain were not their steel-clad chivalry, but the soldiers of the Cross,—the priests who astonished and kindled them by their enthusiasm in the cause of Christ.” Up to a few years ago profound peace reigned; and a garrison of 4,200 soldiers, 3,500 gendarmerie, and 2,000 sailors and marines, was considered sufficient to overawe a population of eight millions, besides keeping in check the fanatical and bloodthirsty Moro pirates.

The Augustinians were the pioneers in religious [14]enterprise, coming, as we said already, with Legaspi, in 1565, four years before the Philippines were formally annexed to Spain. They were followed, in 1577, by the Franciscans; and the labors of both Orders were so successful that Manila was erected into an episcopal see in 1579. Two years later Salazar, a Dominican friar laboring in Mexico, was appointed bishop; and he brought the Dominicans with him to Manila. About the same time, also, the Jesuits and the Recollects, or discalced Augustinians, entered the country. All the Orders went about their work with truly religious zeal; and their success was so great that at the end of the century Mendoza could say: “According to the common opinion, at this day there are converted and baptized more than four hundred thousand souls.” It was a success to be proud of among a people who, when the missionaries came, had no religious worship, nor temple, nor priest, nor form of worship. They had but a hazy notion of a Deity, their sole religious ideas consisting of some imperfect notions of a hell and a heaven. Persecution only gave zest to the work, both in the Philippines and in the Ladrones, of which we may speak together in this connection, as they have a common history. Towards the close of the sixteenth century, as we learn from Argensola, more than six thousand Christians had already been martyred in the single province of Ternate, “that so,” he adds, “the foundation of our faith may be [15]in all parts cemented with the blood of the faithful. They dismembered the bodies, and burned the legs and arms in sight of the still living trunks. They impaled the women, and tore out their bowels; children were torn piecemeal before their mothers’ eyes, and infants were rent from their wombs.” (“Discovery and Conquest of the Molucca and Philippine islands,” by B. L. de Argensola.) Opposition, and persecution too, came from the Mohammedan element in the population, which was already formidable when the Spaniards arrived on the scene, Mohammedanism having been introduced into the islands, especially the more southerly group, as far back as the thirteenth century. Accordingly the Mohammedans waged a long and bitter warfare both against missionaries, and the new Christians, numbers of whom were called on to seal their faith with their blood. Still, in spite of persecution, the Church prospered in those early days. Dampier, the English navigator, who visited the Philippines towards the close of the seventeenth century, testifies to the wonderful progress made even then in civilization. “In every village,” he says, “is a stone church, as well as a parsonage-house for the rector, who is always one of the monks. These last, who are all Europeans, are very much respected by the Indians, while the secular clergy, who commonly are Creoles, are held in contempt. Hence the Government shows great deference to the rectors; for, generally speaking, [16]the Indians always consult them on entering on any enterprise, or even as to paying taxes.” Thus, one century had changed the people from savagery to civilization. In Manila, Dampier found the natives pursuing all the avocations of civilized life—they were merchants, skilled artisans in various trades, clerks, etc.

There were three large colleges,—two under the care of the Dominicans, and one carried on by the Augustinians. There was also a Poor Clare convent, containing forty nuns, together with a hospital and an orphanage. The religious establishments occupied one-third of the city as it then stood. This may seem out of proportion to the religious needs of the city; but we must remember that in Manila, then as now, priests of the various Orders were in training for the numerous missions of the Archipelago, Tonkin, and China (see Appendix I.), and, at the period of which we are speaking, of Japan as well.

Passing on to the present century, the Rev. David Abeel, a Protestant missionary, says of the Philippines: “The Church of Rome has here proselytized to itself the entire population. The influence of the priests is unbounded.” In the year 1858 Mr. Crawford, who was formerly governor of Singapore, made the following declaration at a public missionary meeting: “In the Philippine Islands the Spaniards have converted several millions of people to the Roman Catholic faith, [17]and an immense improvement in their social condition has been the consequence.” Mr. MacMacking confesses that the suppression of the Jesuits, who were banished from the Philippines in 1768, “was attended with the worst effects to the trade and agriculture of the islands.” He adds that “religious processions are as frequently passing through the streets as they are in the Roman Catholic countries of Europe.” He testifies that “the Church has long proved to be, on the whole, by much the most cheap and efficacious instrument of good government and order—even the common people learn reading by its aid, so much at least as to enable them to read their prayer-books and other religious manuals. There are very few Indians who are unable to read, and I have always observed that the Manila men serving on board ships and forming their crew have been much oftener able to subscribe their names to the ship’s articles than the British seamen on board the same vessels could do.” Prosessor Ferdinand Blumentritt, a German Protestant, who is universally acknowledged to be the most competent authority on all that regards the Philippines, spoke most highly of the missionary and scientific work of the Religious Orders there, at a meeting of the Vienna Geographical Society in 1896. The weight of testimony from such a source all must acknowledge; it is indeed a pleasure to present the German scientist’s remarks to the consideration of fair-minded readers. [18]

“I wish to add some remarks,” said Blumentritt, “about the Philippines, as here the Catholic missionaries are usually active not only in the spread of Christianity and its civilization, but also in the geographical and ethnographical exploration of the archipelago. Unfortunately the reports of the missions of the various Orders are not equally accessible, e.g., we have very little account of the Augustinian missions, which are located principally in the lands of the Igorrotes (Northwest Luzon) and on the Island of Negros, among the Budkidnon savages. The only important publication upon Augustinian missions which I have been able to see is the Memoria acerea de las Missiones de los P. P. Augustinos Calzados, Madrid, 1892. According to this the Calced Augustinians in 1892 had in the province of Abra, among the Tinguians, who inhabit it, eight missions with 25,100 souls; in that of Lepanto, two missions with 2,200 souls (Igorrotes); in that of Bengnet, also two missions, with 849 souls (Igorrotes)—total, 28,149 souls, as against 5,302 in 1829. Between 1874 and 1885 the number of savages and heathens converted to Christianity was 1,356; from 1885 to 1888 there were 549. In 1892 the erection of 15 new missions was projected in the provinces of Tiagan, Bontok, Amburayan, and Quiangan.

“The Discalced Augustinians, called in the Philippines ‘Recoletos,’ have missions in the Island of Palawan (or Paragua) and in the group [19]of the Calamianes. Of these missioners, Father Cipriano Navarro has especially distinguished himself by his ethnographical researches; and we owe to him exhaustive reports concerning the Tinitians, Togbanuas, Tandolans, and Bulalacaunos, among whom Christianity is making steady progress.

“The Franciscans have missions in the peninsula of Camarines, in Luzon, and in every large island on the Pacific coast. Ethnography and philology are much indebted to their labors. I need only refer to the works published by myself in the proceedings of our Society, the vocabulary of the Negrito dialect of Baler by Father Fernandez, and the accounts of the Bikols, Dumagats, and Atas, by Father Castano.

“We possess fuller accounts of the Dominicans, who are occupied in converting to Christianity the Alimis, Apayaos, Aripas, Buayas, Bumanguis, Bungians, Calauas, Calingas, Catalangans, Dadayags, Gaddans, Ibibalons, Ibilaos, and Ilongotes, Ipiutys, Isinays, Mayoyaos, Guiangans, and other Ifuagao races. In the missionary review, Correo Sino-Anamito, we find numerous descriptions of popular manners and customs. Some of these, particularly those written by Fathers Villaverde, Buenaventura, Campa, Malumbres, Ruis, and Ferrando, I have already in part made more generally known in these proceedings. The review also publishes occasional sketches, and especially such [20]as throw light on the river-system of North Luzon, the valley of the Rio Grande de Cagayan. The results of their strictly missionary labors are very fruitful.

“But however successful the evangelical and scientific activity of the missionaries of the above Orders, they are far surpassed by what the Jesuits have done in the island of Mindanaoin, in half a generation, for the spread of Christianity and civilization, as well as for the geographical exploration of the second largest island of the Archipelago. When they arrived they found a Christian population only on the east and north coasts, and in a few isolated spots on the other coast regions, such as Zamboanga, Pollok, Cottabatto Davao, and Pundaguitan; and these were mostly Bisayos, with a few Bukidnons, Mandayas, Manabos, and Subanos. In the interior the Spanish Christian settlements along the Macajalas Bay reached only as far as the upper course of the Rio Tagoloan; on the Agusan, from the lake region at Linao to its mouth near Butuan, only two villages, Bunauan and Talacogon. All that was then known of the interior of Mindanao was the Lanao Lake, the lower course of the Pulangin or Rio Grande from its mouth to Lahabay, and the lake region belonging to the river of Ligauasan or Buluan. Of the tribes over and above the Bisayas (Christians) and Moros (Mohammedans), only the Mandayas, Manobos, Subanos, and Budkidnon [21](or ‘Monteses’ of the Spaniards) were known by little more than name, but scarcely mentioned in contemporary literature. Of the rest, except the Tirurayes, scarce the name was known. Of the Atas, Tagabawas, Dulangans, Tagabelis, etc., even the names were unknown.

“How changed since then! The network of rivers in the great island is now very well known; whilst the legendary lake in the centre of the island, whence the Rio Grande was said to flow, and from which the whole island was supposed to derive its name, has now happily disappeared from our maps. In numerous sketches and maps the missionaries have recorded the results of their geographical explorations and discoveries. The manners and customs of the heathen tribes have been fully described by the Jesuits. It has, therefore, always been for me the greatest pleasure to communicate the results of the researches of these Philippine missionaries to wider scientific circles.

“The Jesuits can also point to very great results in their evangelical labors. Most of the heathen tribes are now entirely or in part converted to Christianity, or have at least settled round their missions. Even a tribe so obstinately refractory to civilization, owing to their unsettled and wandering life, as the Mamanuas (who belong to the Negritos) can already point to Christian villages. But the greatest success of the Jesuits has been in bringing a considerable number of the Moros on [22]the Gulf of Davao to embrace Christianity. When it is remembered how rare a thing it is to induce a Mohammedan to be baptized, it must be especially noted that here not a few isolated Moros living among Christians have abjured Islam, but that the Moros converted to Christianity are so numerous that, as they can no longer live among their former co-religionists, they have been allowed to build their separate villages in the region of the Rio Davao. In 1895 the status of the Jesuit missions was as follows: 213,065 souls, 17,608 baptisms of children of Christian parents, 2,973 marriages, 7,215 funerals, 8,238 baptisms of converted heathen.

“In the article ‘Die Katholischen Missionen,’ Oscar Hecht gives the number of Christians in the Philippines as 3,500,000. This is incorrect. The flocks of the different Orders were as follows:—

It is difficult to estimate the number of heathens and Mohammedans; they cannot be under 500,000, nor can they exceed a million.”

Any account of the work of the Religious Orders in the islands would be certainly incomplete if [23]particular mention of their efforts in behalf of education were omitted. These efforts were systematically carried out until interrupted by the recent rebellion. The briefest and most summary mention of what each of the Orders has done, however, is all that may be attempted within the necessary narrow limits of this volumes.

1. The Dominicans are in charge of the University of Manila, which was founded and confided to their care about two centuries ago. It has been generally attended by between two and three thousand natives, who thus receive the benefits of a professional and liberal education. A correspondent of the Daily Telegraph (London) tells his English readers that as “the education of the people has been exclusively in their (the religious’) hands, it is enough to say that practically it does not exist.” The following account of the studies pursued in the University, taken from the official report of the year 1893–1894, is a sufficient answer to this unworthy remark.

COURSE OF STUDIES.

The Faculty of Theology and Canon Law has the following courses of lectures:—

The eight lecturers in this faculty were Dominicans. There were thirty students.

FACULTY OF JURISPRUDENCE.

There were six Dominican and nine other professors teaching in this faculty. The students numbered 405.

FACULTY OF LAW.

In this faculty one Dominican and eleven other professors lectured. There were 60 students.

FACULTY OF MEDICINE.

Three Dominican and thirteen other professors lectured in this faculty. There were 277 students.

FACULTY OF PHARMACY.

There were 89 students. In the schools of practical pharmacy there were 216 students. Three Dominicans, who lectured on Chemistry, Zoölogy, Mineralogy, and Botany, and seven other professors taught in this faculty. [25]

This is the higher education which has been given to the natives for more than two centuries. Is it not something to admire? Can England point back to anything equal to it in the history of her own colonies? Did England in the last century do anything for the material or spiritual advancement of the North American Indians? Did the United States do anything for them till within recent years? Both governments folded their arms while the Indians were being driven before the face of the white settlers; and during the two centuries that the policy of extinction was being carried out on the North American continent the Spanish missionaries were giving the natives of the Philippines all the benefits of higher education. The contrast is instructive, and places Spain on a far higher plane as a colonizer than her quondam rival.

Besides imparting higher education in the University, the Dominicans gave secondary education in two colleges in Manila, to some hundreds of scholars, one principally devoted to a classical education, and the other suited to those intending to engage in a mercantile career. Besides these they had colleges in the towns of Cebu, Jaro, Nueva, Caceres, Dagupan, and Vigan.

2. The Jesuits. “The labors of the Jesuits,” says the Messenger of the Sacred Heart (New York), are chiefly confined to the Island of Mindanao. They direct, however, a flourishing college at [26]Manila, and are in charge of an observatory, which, for the perfection of an outfit and the importance of its observations, ranks foremost among institutions of its kind. This famous observatory was founded by the Spanish Jesuits in 1865, and was at first connected with their college at Manila. It was directed until 1896 by the well-known astronomer and meteorologist, Father Frederick Faura. By its successful prediction of typhoons, so common and destructive in the Philippines, the observatory soon won for itself an enviable reputation throughout the archipelago. Up to the year 1882, no fewer than fourteen of these dangerous tornadoes had been predicted. In consideration of such valuable services, the observatory was, in April, 1884, raised to the rank of a Government institution, under the title of “Meteorological Observatory of Manila,” and was transferred to its present commodious quarters outside the city, with which it has telegraphic and telephonic connections.

“The observatory comprises four departments,—the meteorological, seismological, magnetic, and astronomical. Each department has its special director, and a general director is at the head of the whole establishment. The meteorological section, provided with the very best instruments, is the most important of the four, on account of its practical usefulness to shipping interests. It is in regular communication with more than a [27]hundred observatories in all parts of the world. Twice every day it receives by cable the meteorological observations made at the stations of Nagasaki, Tokio, Kabe (Japan), Shanghai, Amoy, Hong Kong (China), Haiphong (Tonkin), the Island of Formosa, and elsewhere along the coast. Hence the forecasting of typhoons and cyclones is greatly facilitated, and enjoys the confidence of all those that sail the Chinese seas. Many of the instruments used at the observatory are due to the inventive genius of Father Faura, who was also the first to announce typhoons with certainty, and to discover the laws which regulate their formation and path. He is the inventor of a peculiar kind of barometer, which enables any sailor, even if he knows nothing whatever about meteorology, to foresee the approach of storms, and to guard against them.

“Next in importance to the meteorological department is the seismological or earthquake section of the observatory, which is rendering great services to a region so much exposed to earthquakes as the Philippines are. This section is likewise equipped with a remarkably fine apparatus, many of the instruments having been built or improved by Father Faura. For many years Father Miguel Saderra Maso has been in charge of this section, which he has made famous by his learned work, “Seismology in the Philippines,” published in 1895. Father Cirera’s work, “Terrestrial Magnetism [28]in the Philippines,” is also well known in the learned world.

“The splendid achievements of the Manila observatory found their due meed of appreciation and praise in the congress of scientists at the World’s Fair, where the institution was represented by Fathers Algerie and Faura, who came at that time to this country, and spent some months at Georgetown College.

“Father Faura died in January, 1897. His death was that of a martyr of charity. During his sickness, Ryzal (or Ryall), one of the insurgent leaders, had been captured, and condemned to be shot within twenty-four hours. The prisoner was placed in the Chapel of the Passion, and was offered the spiritual ministration of the Jesuit Fathers. But he peremptorily refused to see a priest on the plea that he was a Protestant. Several of the fathers had already been repelled, when Father Faura, who had formerly been Ryzal’s professor at Manila, rising from his bed of sickness, made a last effort to convert the unfortunate man. Though at first repelled like the rest, he was at last admitted by Ryzal; and after arguing and pleading with him for a long time, he had the happiness of bringing him to repentance, and restoring him to the Catholic Church. The condemned man made a sincere confession, heard Mass, received Holy Communion, begged pardon for his errors, and exhorted others to renounce all [29]connection with Freemasonry. His conversion was entire, and his death that of a fervent Christian. The effort to bring about this conversion, however, cost Father Faura his own life. Worn out and prostrated by the interview, he was led back to his bed to die. The conversion of his former pupil was the last apostolic act of Father Faura, and the crowning of a life of great usefulness in the service of religion and of science.”

The sons of St. Ignatius also direct the Municipal Academy of which English correspondents have spoken in terms of high praise.

3. At Vigan also is the Augustinian Seminary and College, under the direction of the fathers, seven of whom are teachers. Here 209 students were taught the following branches (as set down in the report): viz., Dogmatic Theology, Moral Theology, Metaphysics, Logic, Ethics, Physics, Chemistry, Geography, Poetry, Rhetoric, Trigonometry, Geometry, Algebra, Arithmetic, Analysis, and translation of Latin, Greek, French, Church History, Natural History, Universal History, History of Spain, History of the Philippines, Christian Doctrine.

The Augustinians also conducted a splendid orphanage and industrial school at Tambohn, about a league from Manila. In this establishment 145 boys were taught the following trades (Report for 1897–1898): Compositors, 13; press-work, 12; bookbinders, 30; gilders, 3; candle-makers, 43; [30]together with forty-four others too young to be trained.

4. Neither was the education of the female sex neglected. Among other establishments of a like nature, there was an orphan asylum for girls at Mandaloya on the Tasig, conducted by Augustinian nuns, twenty-two in number. Last year it contained 122 pupils, who were receiving instruction in music, the piano, painting, drawing, embroidery, artificial flower-making, dressmaking, hair-dressing, lacemaking, laundry work, and sewing.

5. The Franciscans had colleges as well, and besides doing their share in the work of education, devoted their time and services to the hospitals of the Archipelago, the principal of which are, the Royal Hospital of St. Lazarus at Manila, the Infirmary of St. Ann in the province of Laguna, and that of Vasa in the province of Camarines.

Scattered through the various islands are the posts or residences, where the fathers of the various Orders devote themselves to the “nuevos Christianos,” as they are called, or latter-day converts from Paganism. This zealous work of conversion has never ceased from the time of the conquest, and the Christian population has been steadily on the increase till our own times. The recent traveller,1 whom we quoted at the beginning, [31]came in contact a good deal with the Dominicans during his stay in the Philippines, visiting several of their outlying stations, and receiving everywhere the greatest kindness and hospitality from them. He says: “Everywhere you enter the monastery as though it was your own, eat and drink unstintedly, and sleep, and depart with thanks and a cordial God-speed from the fathers, and naught to pay for the entertainment.” Alas! the good fathers did not know the viper they were nursing. Pity they could not recognize in the smiling Englishman who so readily accepted their hospitality, and “paid naught for the entertainment,” the man who would speak of them as dirty monks, who would consider it worthy of sneering record that they did not shave when on board ship, and who, though not able to discover any evil himself, would repeat gross calumnies about them, got from hearsay. What he saw with his own eyes belies his wicked innuendos. He says: “It was plain that they cared naught for the fretting of the world. In many a dismal place, even in the remotest spots, I found the clusters of monastic exiles perfectly happy—the outer world dead, or too far away—craving for no other fate. They are enchanted to welcome and give you of their best; will even, if struggling overland, lend a vehicle or a ridinghorse to convey you to the next convent on the way. Cheery, kindly, simple people, practical sermons on ‘Content.’ The monks of Ramblon, a [32]dozen or so all told, were delighted to show us all that was to be seen. A homely little church was duly exhibited, built of a local wood, which cuts into planks of extreme width, adorned with a grain which is brought out with wax and oil. The columns were of solid ebony, the floor of four marbles, white, gray, black, and brown. All these were the products of this little island.” A fair-minded man would have duly attributed their joy of mind and kindness to strangers to religious feeling,—to the love of God, for whose sake these Spanish missionaries had given up father and mother, friends and worldly prospects, to spend their lives, year in and year out, without hope of earthly reward, in these spots, dismal enough to the ordinary tourist, but to them bright and cheery, as they were the posts alloted to them by Divine Providence for the extension of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

“The provincial stations,” he says in another place, “are in reality governed by the priests.” How could it be otherwise? With a government notoriously weak and inefficient, with lay officials notoriously corrupt, unwilling to exile themselves in these parts remote from civilization, unwilling to condescend to learn the many various dialects in use in the Archipelago, no wonder that the missionary living in the midst of the people to whom he had devoted his life, and who looked up to him as a father, exercised a sort of parental authority over them. This was done both in the interest of [33]the civil government and of the natives themselves. The governors utilized the authority of the missionaries as long as it suited their purpose; when, on the other hand, the missionaries had to oppose extortion and unjust treatment, the officials started the cry that the missionaries were ruling the Archipelago. About those gentlemen Thomas Comin wrote in 1810:

Here are some edifying facts concerning Spanish officials in the Philippines. In five years Governor-General Manuel de Arandia amassed a quarter of a million dollars; a successor of Arandia, within the last few years, is reported to have made $700,000 in a single year; while another is commonly said to have placed millions to his credit during a short term of office. Men talk openly in Manila of bribing judges to put cases off and off. Little wonder, then, that, with such a state of rottenness, bribery, and corruption obtaining, the missionaries on the remote stations have, in the interests of the people, looked after their worldly affairs.

[34]

The missionary zeal of the Jesuits carried them even to Mindanao, an island so inaccessible by reason of its mountains and volcanoes, its impenetrable jungle, its unnavigable rivers infested with alligators and pirates, its fierce and savage inhabitants always at war with one another, that the Spanish Government exercised only nominal sovereignty over it, and was not ever able even to get its interior surveyed. When the Jesuits came there some years ago they found a Christian population only on the east and north coasts, and in a few isolated spots of the other coast regions. Of the interior tribes many were known only by name. Owing to the zeal of these fathers, not only in missionary enterprise, but also in geographical and ethnographical exploration, the network of rivers in the great island is now very well known, the fathers having recorded the results of their explorations in numerous sketches and maps. They have also fully described the manners and customs of the heathen tribes. As an instance of the savagery of the Mindanayas, for the most part fanatical Moros or Mohammedans, it may be mentioned that head-hunting seemed till lately to be the great object of their existence. The man who had chopped off sixty heads was entitled to wear a scarlet turban for the rest of his mortal life, and scarlet turbans are still far from uncommon among them. As there was an inordinate desire among the doughty and dusky warriors to wear these [35]turbans, it follows that the population was being gradually but surely thinned out. Yet even here, on the sea-coast of Mindanao, the Jesuits established their stations, living in the midst of their small flocks, with their lives in their hands, in close proximity to pirates, savage alligators, and still more savage scarlet turbans.

The correspondent of the Daily Telegraph blames the missionaries for not teaching the elements of the Christian doctrine in Spanish to the natives, contrary, as he says, to an express law, of which they have been continually reminded by the Governor.

The reason, to which he ascribes their conduct is, that they are afraid that if the people were able to read Spanish books and newspapers they might come to know too much. Any argument, however absurd it may be, is evidently good enough, in the eyes of these writers, for use against priests. They are well enough acquainted with the ways of the Spanish officialdom to know that that law is a piece of blatant stupidity, devised by Spanish officials too arrogant or lazy or indifferent to learn the native languages themselves. Picture to yourself, if you can, the missionaries scattered over that vast archipelago, among a people comprising several millions, and speaking thirty different languages and dialects, attempting to teach the catechism in Spanish to their flocks. The supposition becomes still more absurd when we [36]reflect that the Spanish element in the colony does not exceed eight or nine thousand gathered in and about Manila and a few other large towns. The missionaries devote themselves so thoroughly to their flocks, and identify themselves so completely with them, that instead of being able to teach them Spanish they are in danger, in some instances, of forgetting it themselves. Wingfield came across a Dominican missionary who apologized for his bad Spanish, on the ground that having lived continuously for eighteen years with the natives, speaking Visaya the whole time, he had almost forgotten his own tongue. Our experience in Ireland, even at the present time, is that in Irish-speaking districts, those children who are taught their catechism in the native tongue, though they may know English, have a far firmer grasp of the Christian doctrine than those who have been taught it in English. This fact alone shows the patent absurdity of the law quoted with such assurance by the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. [37]

In 1896 we heard of a rising in the remoter parts of the Philippines. It was represented by the Spanish authorities, who at the time controlled the news, as of no moment,—an insurrectionary movement that they could easily cope with. Yet it continued, and seemed to wax strong; and, from rumors which began to circulate about the murdering of monks and friars, we began to feel that the insurrection was of no ordinary or commonplace nature. It seemed to be directed against the Church, and to be animated by a deadly spirit of hostility to the representatives of Religion. It was, of course, impossible at the time to form an opinion as to the cause of the insurrection, from the isolated facts which were allowed to come under the notice of the public. Now, however, the mists have cleared away; and we hope to be able to prove in the course of this inquiry that the insurrection was a premeditated and deliberate attack made upon the Church by a native secret [38]society which was affiliated to, and adopted the methods of, that type of Freemasonry which gave the Carbonari to Italy and the Jacobins to France; a type whose disastrous work has been so much in evidence in South and Central America. It has unfortunately been busily at work for the last thirty or forty years, indoctrinating the simple natives of the Philippines with the modern watchwords of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,”—liberty meaning in this case, license, anarchy, cruelty, bloodshed; equality, the confiscation of property; and fraternity, an impious combination against all opposed to their designs. And foremost amongst these were undoubtedly from the very first the friars, spiritual guides of nearly six millions of native Christians, who, in consequence of their opposition, drew upon themselves the bitter hatred of the members of the Craft. It thus happened that the friars found themselves denounced and vilified in Spanish newspapers, in circular letters issued at Madrid, in speeches at the lodges and clubs, and in the Cortes. The grossest calumnies the foulest lies, were industriously circulated, to lower their prestige, and bring about a downfall of that spiritual power they had justly acquired, and were exercising for the good of souls. Nothing was known of the struggle in these countries until the Spanish-American war brought the Philippines into prominence before the English-speaking world. Then the echoes of the struggle began to [39]reach our ears. Unfortunately for the friars, the sympathies of the world were sought, and sought successfully, to be enlisted on the side of the secret societies, or insurgents, who in this instance were for the most part one and the same. The news sources were shrewdly manipulated by astute conspirators to foster their own purposes; on the Philippine question, world-wide circulation was given to false and calumnious reports and interviews with leaders of the insurrection, full of virulent ex parte statements, while no exposition of views has been sought for from any representative of the friars. As an instance of the unreliability of these interviews, circulated through such justly suspected channels, we give the following. The correspondent of the Daily Telegraph sent, a few months ago, through “Reuter’s Special Service,” an interview he had with Dr. Nozaleda, the Archbishop of Manila, who, by the way, is a Dominican. From this interview it would appear that the Archbishop is opposed to the friars. He is made to say: “The religious Orders must go. That is undeniable, because the whole people are determined on their abolition, and are now able to render their retention impossible.”

His Grace is also made to blame the Orders for causing dissensions, and thus increasing the disfavor with which they are regarded. The correspondent adds that he heard privately from a native priest that the reason the Archbishop hopes for [40]the expulsion of the religious Orders is that the friars have grown too strong for him, and that he expects by getting rid of them to increase his own authority. Now, apart from the fact that the Archbishop is a member of a religious Order himself, a fact worth a dozen arguments, we may dismiss the whole interview as unreliable, since very recently the Archbishop delivered himself, to a representative of the Chicago Record, of quite opposite sentiments.

Mr. Halstead made a special journey to Manila to study the situation. He was most favorably impressed by the Archbishop, whom he has undertaken to vindicate before the people of America. One paragraph from his interview with the Spanish prelate is of special interest at the present moment: “When asked what it was that caused the insurgents to be so ferocious against the priests, and resolved on their expulsion or destruction, he said the rebels were at once false, unjust, and ungrateful. They had been lifted from savagery by Catholic teachers, who had not only been educators in the schools but teachers in the fields. The Catholic orders that were singled out for special punishment had planted in the islands the very industries that were the sources of prosperity; and the leaders of the insurgents had been largely educated by the very men whom now they persecuted. Some of the persecutors had been in Europe, and became revolutionists in the sense of promoting [41]disorder as anarchists. It was the antagonism of the Church to murderous anarchy that aroused the insurgents of the Philippines to become the deadly enemies of priests and religious orders. It was true that in Spain, as in the Philippines, the anarchists were particularly inflamed against the Church.”

Prominence was given last year, in some of the English newspapers, to statements made by a certain Señor S. C. Valdes, a Filipino, who managed to have an interview sent to the papers, through “Reuter’s Special Foreign Agency,” that unfortunately met with a degree of credence on the part of uninformed persons. It is instructive to analyze some of the statements of this gentleman, and compare them with statements made for a similar purpose by other correspondents.

Desiring to prove that the inhabitants of the Philippines are not naked savages, he says: “The inhabitants of the groups of Luzon, the Viscayas, and the coast of Mindanao are very advanced in their education. Seventy-five per cent of them can read and write. There are many native lawyers, doctors, chemists, members of the military and scientific corps, naval and land architects, merchants, naval officers, engineers, and also clever and competent secular priests.” We believe Señor Valdes. In spite of what he says a little further on about numbers of them going abroad for their education, we will refer our readers to the last [42]chapter, in which we showed that it is owing to the friars, who have all the primary, secondary, and higher education in their hands, that the people are so advanced in education; and as regards the native lawyers and other professional men, we refer them to the official reports we have given of Manila University, with its two thousand students, carried on by the Dominicans. As to Mindanao, what the Jesuits have done there can also be referred to. Valdes speaks of “clever and competent secular priests,” having no word of praise for the religious; and yet the higher education of the secular clergy is entirely in their hands.

After this eulogium of his own people by Señor Valdes, is it not curious to find quite an opposite statement, made for party purposes, by the Manila correspondent of the Daily Telegraph? Wishing to show the incompetence of the friars, he says: “The education of the people is entirely in their hands; it is enough to say that practically it does not exist.” And this of a country in which seventy-five per cent of the people, according to Señor Valdes, can read and write, a percentage that would put more than one European country to the blush.

Señor Valdes asserts that the friars exercise a tyrannical power in the islands. He says that they generally consider it an act of disrespect for the natives to visit them except with bare feet. It is [43]curious that Wingfield in his travels never noticed this, and he had an eagle eye for such deficiencies. Valdes is not afraid to make the incredible statements that “the friars and the military said that before the reforms should be granted they would first drown the insurgents in their own blood,” and that General Weyler, when he was captain of the islands, ordered the town of Calumba to be destroyed, and set fire to, simply to please the Dominicans, who were anxious to show their power and influence. Proofs, and strong ones, not mere assertions, are needed when religious men, voluntary exiles from country and friends for the sake of civilizing rude peoples and bringing them under the sweet yoke of Christ, are accused of atrocious cold-bloodedness—wantonly slaughtering innocent men, women, and children for the sake of satisfying a sense of vanity!

The truth of the matter is that the rebellion in the Philippines against Spanish rule was not the uprising of a whole people. Of what account, except for brute force, are some thousands of armed men out of a peaceful population of eight millions. The insurrectionary movement was planned, and directed almost exclusively, by the mestizos, or half-breeds,—the offspring of the union between native women and the Chinese, who form a large proportion of the town population, and do most of the retail trade. We must bear in mind that the leaders had at their command all [44]the refractory elements of the native population,—the banditti, who always existed in large numbers, and were to be found in force not many miles from Manila, and the common criminals whom, at the first opportunity, they let loose from the jails to scour the country. Can we form a judgment of the sentiments of the Philippine people from the conduct of men who have treated their prisoners inhumanly, who have burned churches, looted schools and hospitals, treated ordinary ecclesiastical students with brutality, and subjected nuns in convents to shameful treatment? We have plenty of evidence that the natives on the whole are very much attached to the friars, whom they rescued, when they were able, from the hands of the rebels, and visited constantly while in captivity, doing their best to alleviate their sufferings. That they were peaceably disposed, and loyal to Spain even during the progress of the rebellion, we may assume from Blumentritt, who said, as late as 1897, when recounting his experiences as a scientific explorer in these islands, “There are not many colonies where less blood has been shed, and also not many where the conquered people have so little hatred of, or dislike to, their conquerors. Already so richly endowed with the climate and the beauty of their native land, as well as with the fertility of the soil, the natives of the Philippines are neither despised nor downtrodden by their rulers, whom they, in their turn, do not [45]dislike. One must, therefore, reckon them among the happiest in the world.” His words, of course, do not apply to the noisy demagogues, to the Freemasons, to the insurgents, at least to that part of them who have not been forced into revolt by threats and terrorism, but they describe the state of the millions as yet untouched by the rebellion. Señor Valdes and other men of his stamp are fond of declaring the resolve of the inhabitants of the Philippines “to be free and civilized,” and “not to be subjected to the domination of friars or monkish orders.” They speak the sentiments of a small, but very active and noisy, portion of the population; the overwhelming majority are happy, peaceful, and contented.

We now come to the painful task of noticing some reckless charges made by Señor Valdes against the honor of the missionaries, a painful, yet necessary task, as the accusations were laid before the public some months ago without comment or contradiction of any kind. Señor Valdes may think he has scored a point in making such outrageous statements; but he falls into error if he imagines that what might be readily swallowed by those who hate religion in Spain and Portugal would be as readily accepted in England, Ireland, and America. Apostate priests and nuns, lecturing under the auspices of Mr. Kensit and the Protestant Alliance, have long since made England familiar with this gross kind of calumny, [46]directed against our own priests and nuns, repeated, too, year after year, without proof or shadow of foundation, so recklessly and shamelessly, indeed, that the lecturers only excite the disgust of the sensible portion of the Protestant body. Señor Valdes, with unscrupulous audacity, tries to beslime the character of some of the missionaries, by falsely laying to their charge the foulest and most unnatural crimes, which for decency’s sake we refrain from detailing. According to this vile traducer the priests are devoid of all honor and all the moral virtues.

Now, if this were the first time that these atrocious charges were made, we might say with horror, “Can such things be?” but we learn from the memorial presented last April by the heads of the various religious orders in the Philippines to the Spanish government, that charges of a similar nature were constantly repeated in Spain during the previous eighteen months, both in public and in private; made the subject of speeches in clubs, published in anti-clerical newspapers—all part of the campaign against the friars, all done to lower their prestige in the eyes of the people, and to obtain their expulsion from the islands. If there were any truth in the charges, they would have been brought home to the friars long since; names, dates, and documentary proofs would have been given. A list of well-proven cases, say twenty or thirty, would have been made up, and submitted [47]to the Government, to whom the Freemasons were clamoring for their expulsion. But, like the stuff the anti-clerical lectures nearer home are made of, the charges were always vague, general, and indefinite. The religious, like men of honor, took no notice of these calumnies for a long time, hoping that gradually the storm would blow over; but seeing that it increased day by day, and that they were being constantly insulted by petty government officials in the Philippines, they at last took notice of them, amongst other charges, in their memorial to the Government last April. They asked, as a matter of right and justice, that names and dates would be given, that documentary proofs would be produced. They affirmed that the charges were not made by those who had access to them, and saw them day by day; that their convents were open to inspection; that the lives of those living in the country parts were well known to their parishioners; that in those places they could not act in disguise, as their Spanish nationality made them conspicuous objects to all eyes. They asked, in case their innocence were doubted, that proper judicial proceedings would be instituted.

It has been reserved to an American general to put the last finishing touch to the lurid picture drawn of the lives of the friars in the Philippines, by giving wide circulation in the columns of the New York Herald to a calumny which simply outstrips [48]the imagination.1 The general guards himself by professing to know nothing about the matter except from “common report,” freely circulated in the Philippines. Now the general, as a man of honor, might well have allowed these reports to come in by one ear, and go out by the other; or even if he had kept his mind in suspense, as is evidently the case, he might have refrained in the meantime from publishing the “common report” to the world, knowing how prone human nature is to fasten on the bad, and to believe in evil report, though unproven. “Every student of Blackstone,” says the general, “knows very well what was considered in the olden time to be the feudal right of the lord over the female vassal who married on his estate. It may be surprising to many to learn that the Filipinos allege vehemently that the monastic Orders claim and exact this feudal right on the marriage of the young Philippine girls.” Common report then, according to the general, charges the friars with exacting and claiming a right opposed to the fundamental laws of Christian morality; a right which, if it ever existed in fact, is at any rate lost in the dim distance of time, and is utterly unknown to the world at the present day. It is a pity that the ordinary laws of evidence which are used in dealing with laymen are thrust aside when dealing [49]with priests, and that fanaticism in the latter case is allowed full play for its imagination. Last April (1898) the heads of the religious Orders in the Philippines, in their memorial to the Spanish Government, which by being published both in Spanish and in French, and circulated widely, was intended as a challenge to the civilized world, demanded that all gross charges of a like nature should be investigated by legal means, and that evil-doers should be punished according to law, if they existed in fact. The challenge as yet remains unanswered; yet what would have been more easy to prove in the meantime than such an open and flagrant violation of justice and morality? If proofs could have been had they would have been gladly brought forward by the leaders of the rebels, who have been clamoring for the expulsion of the religious Orders for the last three or four years, and who are by no means simple and unsophisticated savages, but men educated enough to be able to conduct newspapers of their own.

With common sense for their guide, let Protestants reflect for a moment that the Philippines form an integral part of the Catholic Church, that the religious Orders that are governed by generals in Rome, that systematic visitations are made, and that the conduct of every individual is subjected to strict ecclesiastical scrutiny from time to time. Accordingly, unless they hold that the authorities in Rome are willing to allow an appalling [50]evil of the kind to go on without protest, how can they believe that it exists at all?

“In any case, I can assert without a shadow of doubt,” adds the general, “what the Herald’s readers have been previously told by its correspondents—that the people are very bitter towards the monks.” Whom does he mean by people? Had the general and the newspaper correspondents come in contact, during their brief stay in the Philippines, with the six millions of people till lately under the care of the religious Orders? It is true that those who have fomented the rebellion, and the thousands who have joined the insurgent ranks, are bitter towards the monks, or rather friars. But it is by this time a well-known fact that numbers have been drawn in through sheer terrorism, and that numbers of others have been tortured and killed owing to their refusal to join. Mr. Wilson’s late experience on his sugar plantation bears ample witness to this. It is easy enough for a few thousand desperate and armed men to cow fifty times their number of peaceful and unarmed tillers of the soil. The millions, dumb so far, will be found, on closer investigation, to represent far different feelings towards the friars than the noisy rebels who, coming in contact with the American troops and correspondents, profess to represent the feelings of the great body of the nation.

In direct contradiction to the “common report,” circulated by General Meritt, is a testimony to the [51]virtue of the Spanish friars in the Philippines, published some years ago before the present troubles began, by the United States Government in a consular report. In this report Mr. Frank Karuth, F.R.G.S., who in his capacity as president of the Philippines’ Mineral Syndicate had wide experience with the natives, and came into intimate relations with the friars in remote provincial stations, writes of the latter as follows: “In these communes or parishes the priest, especially if he be a Spaniard, as is generally the case, exercises supreme power. He is the father and counsellor of his people, and helps them not only with spiritual advice, but also furthers their material interests. The Spanish priests, friars of strict orders, come to the islands for aye and good, and with scarcely any exception do their duties faithfully and devotedly.” Is not this testimony, given without any ulterior party motives, of more value than the evil reports poured into the ears of newspaper correspondents by the interested leaders of the Philippine rebels? (See Appendix II.)

A few quotations from Protestant travellers who visited the Philippines before the insurrection had biassed men’s minds, and distorted plain facts, will go a long way in the refutation of these flippantly uttered and unspeakably gross calumnies. “It is said,” observes the wife of the American navigator, Captain Morrell, “that in Manila there are more convents (both of men and of women) than in any [52]other city in the world of its size; and the general voice of natives and foreigners declares that they are under excellent regulations.” And then she describes their inmates. “They all seemed full of occupation. There is no idleness in the convents, as is generally supposed;” and this her own account of the various works accomplished in them sufficiently proves. Moreover, “their devotions begin at the dawn of the day, and are often repeated during the whole of it, or until late in the evening, in some form or other. I was born a Protestant, and trust that I shall die a Protestant; but hereafter I shall have more charity for all who profess to love religion, whatever may be their creed.” Sir John Bowring, in 1859, speaks of their influence, an influence generally acquired only by men of holy lives. He says: “They exercise an influence which would seem magical, were it not by their devotees deemed divine.” Dr. Ball, an American Protestant traveller, speaks highly of the character of the Spanish friars in the Philippines. Of one whom he met at Manila, he says: “He has a fund of knowledge on almost every subject, speaks six or seven languages, and has declined an offer of the presidency of the seminary here, preferring to remain always in the capacity of missionary.” Mr. MacMacking, another Protestant, who spent some years in the islands, says, in 1861: “Most of the priests I came in contact with appeared to be thoroughly convinced of, and faithful to, their religion in its purity.”

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After reading these testimonies, we may well open our eyes in astonishment and wonder at the audacity of those who disseminate these flagrant lies about a body of men distinguished by learning and holiness. And yet no one, however holy and devoted his life may be, is safe from the tongue of the calumniator. Robert Louis Stevenson had to take up his pen in defence of the heroic martyr of the leper, Father Damien, vilified by a Protestant minister. Father Damien lived for years in that place of horrors, Molokai, among the lepers, and died a martyr of charity; and, while no Protestant minister was to be found heroic enough to follow his example, one of them, housed in his comfortable bungalow, and jealous of his fame, made unfounded charges against him. So is it ever with the world. And above all, nothing need surprise us in the words and acts of the Philippine insurgents and their abettors. As an instance of their power of concocting a story to bring the friars into disrepute, we give the following account of an attempted poisoning of Aguinaldo by a Spanish prisoner and eleven Franciscans, taken from the Republica Filipina, one of their journals—telegraphed at great expense to Europe by “Reuter’s Special,” and inserted in English papers. The story goes to show that his steward saw a Spanish prisoner, who was allowed a certain amount of freedom, tampering with a bowl of soup intended for Aguinaldo. The steward tasted a spoonful of the soup, and fell dead [54]on the spot. On learning of the affair, the populace attempted to lynch all the Spanish prisoners, amongst whom were forty Spanish priests, detained as hostages; but through Aguinaldo’s intervention, they were protected from violence. The next day at the sitting of the new National Assembly, Aguinaldo’s representative told the story of his narrow escape, and the members unanimously adopted the chairman’s suggestion that they should go in a body to the president’s house and express their sympathy and congratulations. To crown this farce, a special thanksgiving service was held in the church at Malolos that evening. The really silly part of the story is that eleven Franciscan priests, confined as prisoners, were alleged to have been involved in the conspiracy against Aguinaldo’s life, and it was evidently on this supposition that all the priests were on the point of being massacred. A few days afterwards the story was contradicted. After all the fuss and all the expense of the telegrams, it turned out that the steward did not fall dead, and that no priests were concerned in the supposed plot. Still the lie did its work, both in the Philippines and nearer home; for many heard it, and read about it, who did not see the contradiction.

We are not at present in a position to follow Señor Valdes in his statements regarding the dissensions between the native and European friars, the rigorous exactions and tithes, “the friars calling [55]themselves owners of the land cultivated by the natives, claiming rents and tithes which the real owners refused to pay,” but we believe them to be as baseless as his other accusations. Before he made them, the friars had already, in their memorial to the Spanish Government, taken notice of similar accusations, and asked for dates, names, and proofs. It is curious that no English travellers to these regions have taken notice of these supposed oppressions on the part of the friars. They are concocted with the design of expelling the friars from the islands, and confiscating their property, which they have lawfully acquired, and added to, by three centuries of industry. It is true they are rich in landed property, but their riches do not enable them to live individually in luxury. They are used by the Orders for the purposes of the Orders, in furthering education, maintaining hospitals, orphanages, and industrial schools, and in extending their missions not only in the Philippines, but also in China, Tonkin, Japan, and Formosa. Is it not better, in the interests of the people, that they should continue in their possessions than that they should be robbed of them, turned adrift, and their property divided among needy adventurers? It is a significant fact that one of the first acts of the National Assembly of the insurgents was to vote a pension of seventeen thousand dollars to Aguinaldo, enough to keep several religious communities in existence. These political heroes are anxious to [56]enrich themselves at the expense of others, and to spend in luxury what has been gathered together through three centuries of frugal living.

A sample calumny of the kind, to which unbounded circulation has been given, and its sufficient refutation from an authoritative source, to which no such reproduction has been extended, may not be out of place by way of conclusion to our present remarks. Let the candid reader judge whose words—the Rev. Mr. Parkhurst’s or Father McKinnon’s—bear the ear-marks of personal investigation and conscientious endeavor after the truth—“the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

These statements of Mr. Parkhurst were clipped from an article in The Cleveland Plain Dealer (Cleveland, O.); and the clipping was forwarded to Father McKinnon, who is at present in Manila, and has been appointed superintentent of all the schools in that city by General Otis, the commander-in-chief of the American army of occupation. Father McKinnon was requested to comment upon the extract. The clipping and the reply are herewith presented.

To this Father McKinnon replies:—

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Secret societies, and, above all, that great guild known as Freemasonry, are certainly foremost, if not controlling, factors in the warfare made upon throne and altar during the last one hundred and fifty years.

In saying this we do not intend to express any opinion for or against the sentiments of Protestant Freemasons in England and the United States, numbers of whom, no doubt, reprobate the anti-Christian spirit this association shows on the Continent and in Spanish America. They have been brought up to regard it as a perfectly harmless and beneficent institution, and cannot understand the attitude taken with regard to it by the Catholic Church.

It is quite true that Freemasonry may have in these countries kept to its original constitution, which, we may admit, was of a beneficent nature. But what Catholic writers on the subject urgently insist upon is, that on the Continent it very soon [61]assumed a political and dangerous character. For a long time it was not condemned by the Church, and many good Catholics of rank and position gave their names to it. It was only when its dangerous tendencies came to light that it received solemn ecclesiastical condemnation, and that Catholics were forbidden to join it. For more than a century this secret guild has been at the bottom of the revolutions that have desolated the modern world. Some years previous to the French Revolution, German envoys of the Society of the Illuminati advised the French Masons to form a political committee in each lodge; and in time, as Robison remarks, these committees led to the formation of the Jacobin Club. “Thus were the lodges of France,” says this writer, “converted in a very short time into a set of affiliated secret societies, corresponding with the mother lodges of Paris, receiving from thence their principles and instructions, and ready to rise up at once when called upon to carry on the great work of overturning the State. Hence it arose that the French aimed, in the very beginning, at subverting the whole world. Hence, too, may be explained how the revolution took place almost in a moment in every part of France. The revolutionary societies were early formed, and were working in secret before the opening of the National Assembly; and the whole nation changed, and changed again and again, as if by beat of drum.” [62]

In Spain, since its introduction it assumed a sanguinary and virulent character; it brought about revolutions and civil wars, embittered classes against one another, wronged and starved the clergy, robbed, turned adrift, and banished the religious Orders.

There is, indeed, a good deal of difficulty in tracing all these evils to the action of the Freemasons; for on the Continent, especially in Spain, the society has been always of a more secret nature than in these countries. Members of the Craft in England and the United States are generally well known to belong to it; their halls and lodges in the larger towns are imposing and conspicuous; their emblems and badges are often seen in the light of day. But on the Continent we see very little of all this; it is a thoroughly secret society; the members and their movements are carefully veiled from sight. As we said before, Freemasonry, on its introduction to the Continent, at once assumed a political character. The Deists and free-thinkers of the last century utilized it as a potent means of combining against the Church, and of carrying on their evil propaganda. In this way they were aided by the Jansenists, with different motives it is true, but still, when it was a question of opposing the religious Orders, with a whole heart. The working of the society in Spain in this century has necessarily been more stealthy and insidious than in France, for there it [63]was face to face with a truly Catholic population devotedly attached to the Church.

By means of atheistical French literature, the works of Voltaire and other unbelievers, translated into Spanish, brought across the border in large bales, and disseminated through the Peninsula, the Freemasons had already indoctrinated a large number of active and restless spirits with revolutionary and anti-Christian ideas, when the troubles and civil war of 1834 gave them the opportunity they desired of making an onslaught on the religious Orders. At such times the minds of men are in a ferment, and the most incredible reports may be spread abroad, and will be implicitly believed by the populace. Accordingly, on the awful visitation of cholera, which swept over Europe at that time, desolating cities and towns, and leaving thousands upon thousands of families in mourning, in Madrid the report was industriously spread by the Masons that the Monks and Friars had poisoned the wells, and were the cause of the sickness among the people. In a mad fit of rage the populace rose on all sides, rushed to the convents and monasteries, and murdered all the inmates they could lay their hands upon. This awful event is referred to in the Memorial.

Such a state of things may seem hardly possible in the nineteenth century; and yet a similar catastrophe nearly happened in Lisbon a few years ago, the circumstances of which were related to the [64]writer by one of the Dominicans who was living there at the time. It appears that the Dominican nuns had opened a dispensary for the relief of the poor. Strange to say, the frightful report soon went abroad that the nuns were stealing children, and killing and boiling them down to make a healing ointment out of their remains. The city was in an uproar; it was unsafe for priests and nuns to be seen in the streets; and the populace who really believed the absurd story, being in a furious state of excitement, were on the point of burning down the convent, and maltreating the nuns.

To return to Spain, the popular rising in Madrid was utilized by the revolutionary party in carrying out, the following year, the suppression of all the convents and monasteries in the country. The religious were driven out into the world; and their lands, goods, libraries, and art-treasures were sold for the benefit of the public debt, and to supply means to carry on the civil war. The bishops and secular clergy as well were also robbed, numerous episcopal sees were suppressed, and the goods of the Church declared to be national property. The Freemason Government promised to look after the interests of the Church by paying salaries to all ecclesiastics. As a result, Spain was filled, in a few years, with a poverty-stricken and starving clergy, and ruined churches and mouldering abbeys were to be seen on all sides. The effects of that great spoliation are still felt in the Peninsula; for [65]though the religious Orders have revived in the meantime, and numerous convents and monasteries have been built, the priests are not in sufficient numbers for the needs of the population, which thereby, in many places, is suffering great spiritual destitution.

The policy of robbery and confiscation was boldly advocated for the Philippines, just before the late war, in one of the leading reviews of Madrid. Juan Ferrando Gomez, in a series of articles1 bitterly hostile to the Philippine Friars, proposed their entire suppression. They should be turned out of their convents and missionary houses by a secret decree, of which they were to be kept in ignorance till the execution actually took place. Their convents in Manila would be useful as barracks and Government offices, their country estates could be divided amongst their tenants, and the rents formerly paid to the Friars could be commuted into a tax to be paid to the State. Moreover, the Archbishop of Manila, and any others of the bishops belonging to the religious Orders, should be forced out of the country. Besides that, the schools and university belonging to the Friars should also be either suppressed, or taken out of their hands. Reading these flagrantly unjust proposals in the light of recent Spanish history, and with the help of the Memorial, we are [66]inclined to believe that, without much further pressure from the Freemasons, the Spanish Ministry would have carried them out. Fortunately for the Friars, as well as the natives, they have no voice in the matter now. Under the American flag the religious will be treated as citizens, having the common right of citizens, neither to be molested in their persons nor robbed of their property. The President of the United States has declared this in clear terms to the Holy See.

With regard to Freemasonry in Spanish or Latin America, the Rev. Reuben Parsons has recently written on the subject (see Appendix III.), substantiating all his assertions by quotations from Masonic organs or other unprejudiced sources, and clearly exposing the systematic war which the lodges in South and Central America have carried on against religion. He shows how it has started revolutions, assassinated the leaders of the people, exiled the clergy, and persecuted the Church in other ways.

We will now endeavor to trace the history of Freemasonry in the Philippines and its connection with the insurrection there. In the Philippines Freemasonry found itself face to face with a simple native population, mostly Christian, and an active body of Spanish missionaries belonging to various religious Orders, loyal to their native country, possessing unbounded influence over their flocks, and rapidly bringing under the yoke of Christ the tribes [67]who were still Pagan. The religious were a power that they could not hope to cope with for a long time; and so at first they were left unmolested, while the members of the Craft were gathering converts, and strengthening their position, among a class more suitable to their nefarious designs, viz., the mestizos, or half-breeds; the Filipinos, or those who, though born in the country, consider themselves the pure-blooded descendants of the early colonists; and the Spanish officials, numbers of whom were already Masons before they went to the Archipelago.

That the Freemasonry in the Philippines has shown itself of a distinctly sanguinary nature is not to be wondered at when we consider its close connection with Spain. The Lodge of Action, or Red Lodge, composed of determined revolutionists ready to use the dagger, and prepared to wade through a sea of blood to accomplish their designs, represented by Mazzini and the Carbonari in Italy, has a large following in Spain, and was presided over, a few years ago, by Zorilla, the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Spain.

The following account of the growth of Freemasonry in the Philippines, taken from the Rosario, an organ published in Rome, the editor of which has access to special information, and is in close touch with friars who have been living for many years in the archipelago as missionaries, will be of profound interest. In or about 1860 many [68]of the strangers who frequented the Philippines were Freemasons, and members of the lodges of Singapore, Hongkong, Java, Macao, and the open ports of China. This was at a period when England, Holland, France, the United States, for colonial reasons of their own, showed hostility to Spain. It was therefore quite natural that, in those lodges, an anti-Spanish spirit gradually arose in the Philippines. Seeing this spirit arising, two officials of the Spanish navy, Malcampo and Mendez Nunez, Freemasons themselves, determined to oppose Freemasonry to Freemasonry, by founding lodges that would uphold the Spanish interests; they therefore established, at Cavite, the Lodge Primera Luz Filippina, placing it under the Grand Orient of Lusitania, and a little afterwards another lodge at Zamboanga, for the officials, seamen, and civil functionaries who held positions in Mindanao.

In opposition to these, the strangers residing in the Philippines established at Manila itself a lodge of the Scottish rite, as a point d’appui for the enemies of Spain. They thus moved the centre of conspiracy against Spain to the islands themselves, and tried to draw the natives into their nets by giving them important positions in the Craft. The two opposing factions of Freemasonry also increased their numbers largely by taking in the political exiles who were sent to the Philippines as a result of the part taken by them in the various [69]civil wars in the Peninsula, most of whom gave their names and services to one or the other. It is remarkable that these two bodies, guided by opposite political principles, one depending on a Spanish centre and directed principally by Spaniards, the other directed principally by Germans, English, and Americans, and opposed to Spanish interests, found, at least in one direction, a point of concord, namely, in opposition to the religious Orders. Although the Spanish Masons were actuated by a love for their mother-country, still the well-known anti-clericalism of Freemasonry prevailed over every other consideration, blinding them to the fact that the best and most influential representatives of Spain in the Philippines were to be found in the religious Orders, who were the only civilizing force able to deal with the natives. They thus indirectly paved the way for the insurrection; for it is well known that from the ranks of the opposing factions, and principally by reason of their anti-clerical tendencies, arose the sanguinary society of the “Katipunan,” which made it its direct aim to expel the friars, and overturn the Spanish government in the islands. The Grand Orient, the organ of this society, declared that one of the first articles of its programme was the extermination of the religious. And here it may be noticed that the ninth term of the proposals made by the insurgents to America was as follows: “There shall be a general religious toleration; but [70]measures shall be adopted for the abolition and expulsion of the religious communities, who, with an iron hand, have hitherto demoralized the actual civil administration.”

In the meantime the lodges increased in number, so much so that two years ago there were at Manila sixteen lodges affiliated to the Grand Orient of Spain, and one at least in every pueblo in the province of Luzon, and also lodges in Zamboanga and the Visaya Islands; an Anglo-German club-lodge, on the books of which were inscribed the names of a great part of the Government officials; also the German Union, affiliated to the Grand Orient of Berlin; the society of S. Giovanni del Monte, a centre common to Swiss, French, Belgian, and Dutch Masons. In all, according to reliable statistics, there were a hundred lodges and 25,000 initiates. When the Freemasonry of the Philippines had gathered these numbers under its banner, the insurrection broke out; and of its 25,000 members, at least 20,000 were to be found in the ranks of the rebels. Could any clearer proof than this be found that the insurrection in the Philippines is the direct work of Freemasonry?

We will here call the attention of our readers to two of the illustrations. The first is a collection of various seals and stamps, forty-one in number, in use by the various branches of the Katipunan, the sanguinary secret society of the natives. Masonic emblems, the compass and rule, the [71]triangle, the keys, etc., are to be found on almost all of them, proving beyond doubt the Masonic direction and constitution of the society. Turn now to the other illustration,—a Masonic apron, worn at secret meetings and also in battle, which was found on the body of an insurgent after an engagement. No concealment here of methods to be used,—the head dripping with blood, one hand grasping the bleeding head, and the other holding the dagger, sufficiently attest to all beholders the work of the Red Lodge.

The position of the religious Orders in the Philippines, just before the war broke out between Spain and America, had become so perilous and unbearable, that they addressed a long Memorial to the Spanish Government, exposing their grievances, explaining the cause of the rebellion, and suggesting remedies suitable for the situation.

This Memorial is more than a mere appeal to the Spanish Government. It is a challenge to the civilized world, made by men whose dignity and honor have been outraged by awful and unjust charges levelled at them by their foes, and spread far and near by the press. The Memorial has been put into print by the Friars, and scattered through Spain; it has been translated into French, and now it appears (in a condensed form) in an English dress. Up to the present, at any rate, it has not drawn forth an answer from those whose calumnies were the cause of its appearance. [72]From another point of view it is of interest, giving us valuable information as to the causes of the rebellion, and incidentally throwing a lurid light upon the dark places and dark workings of Freemasonry. Its importance as an authoritative exposition lies in the fact that it emanates from the combined heads of all the religious Orders in the Philippines, men having under their spiritual care more than five out of the six millions of Christians in the country. It is signed by Father Manuel Gutierrez, Provincial of the Augustinians; Father Gilberto Martin, Commissary-Provincial of the Franciscans; Father Francisco Ajarro, Provincial of the Recollects; Father Candido Garcia Valles, Vicar-Provincial of the Dominicans; Pio Pi, S. J., Superior of the Missions of the Society of Jesus.

We doubt whether any official notice was taken of the document by the Spanish Government. It was on its way to Spain when, on the declaration of war by America, Admiral Dewey stole into Manila Bay by night, shattered the Spanish fleet the next morning at Cavite, and laid siege to Manila. In the meantime, too, the Spanish Ministry had resigned; and when the documents arrived at its destination, a new Ministry was in office, under Señor Sagasta, with a new colonial minister. Facing bravely, but ineffectually, one of the greatest powers in the world, the new Ministry was entirely taken up with cares and interests [73]on which depended the existence of Spain as a nation.

A striking characteristic of the memorial is its outspoken insistence upon Freemasonry as the principal cause of the Rebellion, a position not unwarranted in view of the evidence presented on previous pages. So much has been heard from the opponents of the religious Orders, that a word from themselves, in their own defence, will have all the air of novelty. We reprint the memorial, quite confident that it will not suffer by comparison with what has appeared from the other side.

The Memorial of the Philippine Friars to the Spanish Government, April, 1898.

[86]

We cannot view without grave misgivings the unexpected turn that affairs have taken since the war, and the second war which has broken out between the rebels and the Americans. It is now plain that it was entire independence from all control that the promoters of the rebellion were looking for from the very beginning; this being well known to the Friars all along, and clearly indicated in their memorial to the Spanish Government. Aguinaldo and his companions have unlimited confidence in themselves, and aspire to form a civilized republic. The character of this pure-souled patriot may be judged from a transaction he had with the Spanish Government. After the armistice of Biac-na-Bato, he was bought out by them, and took thousands of dollars as his price for leaving the country for aye, never to return. He pocketed the money, and went off to Hongkong; but when the Americans came to Manila, and destroyed the Spanish fleet, this worthy returned to the Philippines, and once more raised [87]the standard of rebellion. As a result the Americans are apt to find themselves burdened with a war expenditure, even heavier than that borne by Spain in her effort to prevent a repetition in the Philippines of the gruesome story of San Domingo and Hayti. All colored and tropical races have a tendency to revert to their original type and the barbarous customs of their ancestors. The blacks got possession of Hayti nearly a century ago, at which time they were at least domesticated, and partially civilized, having been in contact with the white man for the two previous centuries. They have gone back, and not forward, ever since. The history of the black republic is a bloody revolution every two or three years, distinguished by acts of barbarous ferocity. Life there at the present day is a hideous caricature of civilization and Christianity. Incredible as it may seem, there has been a revival in the remote villages of the old African serpent-worship, and child sacrifices, followed by cannibalism.

Ten Spanish Augustinian Friars recently came to San Francisco from the Philippines (see Appendix IV.). In an interview with the representative of the San Francisco Monitor they stated that it was not through fear of the Americans that they had left Manila, but, on the contrary, they believed that the Church would prosper under American rule. They said that the respectable element in the Philippines, though they had been quite content [88]with the Spanish rule, and deeming it all that could be expected under the circumstances, are yet welcoming the Americans as a relief from insurgent atrocities. “The insurgents,” they said, “are an undisciplined mob of rioters, led by a demagogue. They are the riff-raff of the islands, men without principle or property in most instances. Aguinaldo has them pretty well in hand to-day, but to-morrow they may disintegrate into fifty gangs. Aguinaldo is an ungrateful renegade, who was fed, clothed, and educated by Catholic priests. He is a mere puppet in the hands of the Freemasons.1 It is to these worthies and organized [89]anarchy in Europe that we may trace the origin of the trouble in the Philippines. Soon after the destruction of the Spanish fleet, the insurgents wrecked our schools, robbed and despoiled our missions and churches, and drove us into Manila. About fifty priests were brutally killed by them. As our field of work was thus laid bare, we decided to leave the Philippines. What made us depart was the discouragement of seeing the work of years destroyed by the men we had gone to teach, and the improbability of being able to build up the work again immediately.”

The Filipinos have already shown proof how far removed they are from civilized ideals, and how dangerous it would be to leave them to themselves, by their inhuman treatment of their Spanish prisoners. Besides ordinary Spanish civilians, they have kept in captivity for several months hundreds of Friars, including one hundred Dominicans, and the Dominican Bishop of Neuva Segovia, Mgr. Joseph Hevia, whose portrait we give. Numbers of the Friars have lately died of the hardships to which they were subjected. A letter, received some time ago from one of them by a friend in Manila, describes the ferocious and satanic hatred shown towards them by the rebel chiefs. They were stripped of their clothes, hats, and shoes, robbed of their money, spat upon, tied to trees, and flogged several times. Daily they were forced to work on the public roads from [90]morning to evening, under a broiling sun, receiving food and drink barely sufficient to support life. The leaders mocked at and jested over their sufferings. Though violent threats were held out against all who succored them, their parishioners seized opportunities of coming to visit them, and alleviate their miseries. From other sources we learn that the noses of some of the prisoners were slit, and a cord passed through the aperture, to be used as a leading-string by their guards. The venerable Bishop was subjected to the grossest indignities. One aged Friar was placed on a saddle, and jumped upon till blood flowed from his mouth and nose. Another, it is said, clothed only in a rain-coat, was carried in triumph for two hundred yards, and then cudgelled to death amid savage cries. Some were crushed to death between boards. Nuns in the convents were subjected to shameful treatment. In the name of common sense, we ask if men who encourage or permit such atrocities are fit to control and guide the destinies of eight millions of people. (See Appendix V.)

Of course the policy of the Press in general has been to keep these atrocities from the eyes of the public. As it did not suit political purposes to publish them, they have been kept concealed. Owing to this careful management, the sympathies of the world have been enlisted on the side of the “poor downtrodden Filipinos.” An impartial [91]examination of the grievances of the latter, and of the catch-cries by which the leaders have seduced a considerable portion of the simple natives, will not reveal very much against either the civil or the ecclesiastical rule of the Spaniard. As in everything human, we may suppose that neither was absolute perfection; but, all things considered, there was less to justify rebellion in the Philippines than in most parts of the world where the black is ruled by the white man.

One of the grievances of the rebels is that nearly all the ecclesiastics in the Archipelago have been Spaniards, and they demand an entirely native clergy. Now, the Catholic Church has been always most anxious to form a native clergy in missionary countries, but insuperable difficulties have often prevented the realization of this idea. Among colored races there is a paucity of real vocations; it is hard enough to get the people to live up to the Christian ideal without adding thereto the grave responsibilities and life of self-sacrifice of the priesthood. An example in point is the Black Republic of Hayti. It is a Catholic country, nominally at least. The people have retained the Faith taught them by the white man, though preserving such a dislike to him that no white man can own a yard of land in the country. Yet such is their inability to provide themselves with priests of their own blood that they are forced to fall back on the services of a French [92]Bishop and French missionary priests, who do all the spiritual work of the island. Another case in point is that of Cuba, an island containing a million and a half of inhabitants, Cubans and Spaniards, of which only forty-three of the former are to be found in the ranks of the priesthood. There has never been any distinction made between Cubans and Spaniards in the two Seminaries of Havana and Santiago de Cuba; all are received alike, and treated alike if they have a vocation; of the forty-three priests, twenty-eight hold parishes, and the rest have other positions of trust, which shows that it is simply owing to lack of vocations and not to any other cause that we must ascribe their fewness in number. In the Philippines, as far back as two centuries ago, the experiment was made of forming a native priesthood, with doubtful success, however, as Dampier informs us that the natives generally held the native priests in contempt, while holding the Spanish clergy in the greatest esteem. We must, perforce, conclude that in the Philippines, as in other countries, it is simply lack of vocations that keeps the number of the native clergy at such a low ebb.

Another grievance, brought well to the front by those who have written on behalf of the Filipinos, is the taxation, which is alleged to have been excessive. The writer is informed by one who lived many years there that it was not. However this may be, all taxation is odious to primitive [93]and half-civilized communities, who are inclined to look upon the most necessary taxes, without which no stable government could be carried on, in the light of oppression. The Americans will have the same difficulties to face with regard to taxation as the Spaniards had, though not in the same degree maybe, as the country will be opened to trade in a freer way than formerly. In the interests of order, and also to protect the people from unjust imposts, the Friars were in the habit of acting as their counsellors in these matters, and used to exhort their parishioners publicly and privately to pay the necessary taxes. A passage from Blumentritt, whom we have quoted more than once in our previous chapters, will go to show that all this was done in the interests of the people: “In the following centuries the Friars continued to extend their protecting hand over the natives, preventing, as far as possible, any oppression on the part of the Government employés.” Yet this action of the Friars, good, charitable, and necessary under the circumstances, has been used by the promoters of the rebellion as a fulcrum to raise the Friars, in the eyes of the poorer classes, into the invidious position of tax-gatherers, tyrants, and abettors of oppression. Without doubt, cruel methods, for which, however, the Friars were not responsible, were in vogue in dealing with defaulters, as we may see in Dean Worcester’s lately published work on the Philippines; but it is nothing [94]less than downright hypocrisy to raise a chorus of condemnation against the Spaniard on this score, when it is well known that no other nation, in trying to solve the eternal difficulty about the taxation of colored and subject races, has emerged from the conflict with clean hands. We remember reading some years ago of very cruel methods employed in the gathering of the taxes in British India, in some of the up-country districts; and within the present year of grace, 1899, two books have appeared dealing with the English and the Dutch in South Africa,2 both of which, in describing the punishment inflicted on those refusing to pay taxes to the ruling powers, could easily give points to the colonial Spaniard for cruelty. What is very remarkable about the Protestant missionary is that, instead of condemning the barbarities described in his book, of which he was an eye-witness, he approves of them, even to the extent of giving his sanction to the inhuman crime of blowing up with dynamite the caves in which four hundred men, women, and children had taken refuge. The Rev. Mr. Rae’s opinion of the campaign against Malaboch for his refusal to pay taxes, a campaign in which women and children, and men bearing flags of truce were fired upon recklessly, is that “the Transvaal Government was doing a much [95]better work than any Christian missionary has yet accomplished.” God help the Filipinos if Protestant missionaries of this description are going to overrun the field of labor left vacant by the deaths and expulsion of the Spanish Friars. One great test of the mild rule of the Spaniard in that country is that the native population has increased since the conquest, instead of being almost exterminated, as is the case in North America and in many of the colonies of European States. We hope that the American rule will be characterized by clemency and justice. A hypocritical cry has been raised in the States about the tyranny and oppression under which the natives are said to be groaning. The rule of the Spaniard has indeed been imperfect enough; but America should approach the question of reform with becoming modesty, seeing that her own record in dealing with the Indians has been stained by many a crime against human rights. They have been robbed of the country which once was their own, and driven back from reservation to reservation, while even the rights guaranteed to them by Government as compensation for what they lost have been often filched from them by unscrupulous officials. The light recently thrown on the case of the Pillager Indians has disclosed cruelty, open robbery, and a disregard of solemn obligations. In the Philippines the Americans will find the natives still in possession of their country; [96]a people, once wild and nomadic like the Indians, brought into settled habits of life by three centuries of missionary effort; a people, in fine, who, whatever is said to the contrary by noisy declaimers and demagogues, have been on the whole well pleased with their lot.

It is quite evident from the words and acts of the rebels that they have been casting envious eyes on the large landed estates of the Friars, hoping, on their expulsion, to have a division of the spoils among themselves. Already, before the war, an iniquitous plan of confiscation was boldly advocated in Spain itself. We now learn to our surprise, from the Church News (Washington, D.C.), that this cry has found an echo across the Atlantic from Protestant pulpits in the States. Besides the fact that confiscation would be robbery pure and simple, as the estates are not national property, and have not been given by the Government, but have been acquired in the usual way by purchase, and in the course of three centuries have naturally grown large, confiscation of the estates would mean a great calamity to the country, even if the Friars were allowed to go back quietly to their parishes, and resume their spiritual ministrations among the people. For it was by means of the estates that the Friars introduced agriculture and settled habits of life among tribes originally nomadic; it was by means of the estates that they got them to live in villages, and [97]introduced amongst them the arts of civilized life; it was by means of the estates that they acquired the power of inducing them to labor with a certain amount of regularity and method, the great safeguard against a relapse into a state of savagery. Giraudier, who was director of the “Diario” of Manila, and spent thirty years in the Archipelago, says something very much to the point: “The natives, with some rare exceptions, are in need of tutelage, without which they would fall back to the customs of their ancestors, a tutelage that no one can exercise better than the Friars.” The latter, in truth, made themselves all in all to the people. Within the precincts of the monasteries were to be found workshops for teaching carpentry, forges for teaching the natives the working of iron, brick and tileyards,—in fact, most of the mechanical arts were fostered and encouraged by the Friars. The villages they formed around them presented a pleasing picture of happiness and content, in startling contrast to the homes of those who were still pagan and uncivilized.

A former British consul thus describes them: “Orderly children, respected parents, women subject but not oppressed, men ruling but not despotic, reverence with kindness, obedience with affection—these form a lovable picture by no means rare in the villages of the Eastern Isles.” Will such a happy state of things exist under new conditions? We are very much inclined to doubt [98]it. The experiment tried in some of the islands of the West Indies of making the blacks small freeholders, and planting them on the bankrupt planters’ estates, has not been attended by such beneficial results to the land as to justify our hoping that a similar experiment in the Philippines will prove a success. The natives of the tropics in general are like overgrown children, blessed with the virtues and cursed with the faults of children, rejoicing in present abundance, and destitute of that measure of forethought for the morrow, without which there can be no human progress. What a contrast at the present day do the civilized villages under the paternal care, and, if you will, government, of Friars present to the wild nomadic life still led by the natives of Mindanao, whom the Jesuit fathers are trying to bring under civilizing influences. We find, from letters written lately by some of the fathers there, that human sacrifice is still in vogue, and murder, pillage, and slave-catching extremely common. We fear that self-government, bringing in internal conflicts between the various parts of the Archipelago, would gradually reduce most of it to this deplorable state of things, and that the Philippine Republic would be as great a travesty on civilization as Hayti. [99]

We cannot too strongly emphasize the great interest that the change of government in the Philippines should have for the English-speaking Catholic public, seeing that a Catholic population, as large, if not larger, than the combined Catholic population of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, is about to be brought under the influence of the English-speaking world, and in close touch with the Catholic Church in America, and, perhaps, later on, with ourselves. It is not more than a year ago that the Philippines were a terra incognita to us all, of which we knew the name, but hardly more. For the last ten months they have been brought under our notice almost daily by the newspapers, and monthly in the pages of the magazines. In the meantime their control has passed from Spain to America, and a conflict of opinion is going on in the States as to the desirability or otherwise of undertaking the responsibility of their future government. Under the old [100]régime, Church and State were united: a bearable condition when the State was professedly Catholic, but absolutely unbearable when antagonistic influences control the Government, hamper the Church in her freedom of action, and degrade her into servitude while professing to be her protector. In the new condition of things the Church will be placed in the same position as it holds in America, free to flourish or to die, depending entirely on its own resources, and neither helped nor persecuted by the State. Its ministers, though not enjoying any special privileges, will be protected in their persons and property in common with all other citizens. Its religious orders will receive the same recognition as secular corporations, and their corporate property will be respected. So far so good; for it was to be feared that the Spanish Government, who had been deterred only by political motives from suppressing the Orders, yielding at last to the pressure of the Freemasons, might have confiscated their property, and either secularized their members or expelled them from the islands. Still we cannot close our eyes to the fact that dangers from a different quarter loom up which it much behooves Catholics to carefully consider. There is a pressing necessity of being alive to those dangers, if worse evils than ever are not to befall that large Catholic population of the Far East.

As might be expected, the Protestant missionary [101]bodies have inaugurated a movement for sending out missionaries of their own to the Archipelago. The Rev. John R. Hykes was directed last September by the American Bible Society to proceed from Shanghai to Manila, and investigate concerning the Philippines “as a field for Bible work.” He submitted his report in a very short time, having made up his mind on the religious needs of the people, the scandalous lives of the Friars, and the superstition of their benighted parishioners with incredible rapidity. His sensational report duly appeared in the American papers as the “Startling Revelations made by the Rev. John R. Hykes.” Sure of a sympathetic audience, he laid on the colors thickly. The report need not occupy much of our attention. Half of it is made up of ordinary information about the country that any one could get for himself out of a good encyclopædia, and the other half is a rehash and repetition of the charges already dealt with by us in previous chapters. One statement is, however, worth noticing, as it clearly indicates the hopelessness of getting fair and unbiassed treatment from the enemies of the Church. Mr. Hykes states that he was shocked by the stories of immorality brought against the Friars. And, to make an impression, he adds that the people who told him the stories said they were prepared to give names, dates, and places in confirmation of what they said. Now, as already noted, names, [102]dates, and places were the very things asked for by the Friars in the Memorial to the Spanish Government, as far back as last April; but their enemies, finding those details beyond their power, have adopted the simpler process of repeating the calumnies to all who, like Mr. Hykes, give them a ready and sympathetic hearing. Mr. Hykes, who never went beyond Manila, presumes to judge, in a few days or weeks, of the spiritual condition of six millions of Christians, and more than a thousand priests, scattered over the whole Philippine Archipelago. (See Appendix VI.) We are afraid that too many of the type of Mr. Hykes will be found among the new missionaries of the Philippines, coming in crowds, with their wives and children, to spread, forsooth, the pure light of the Gospel, or rather to engage in the more congenial task of vilifying the Catholic Church.

In an American Protestant missionary review, there is an article on the Philippines, by a former agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in that country. The article, needless to say, is full of gross misrepresentations. It puts down the Christian population as seven million Romanists; the writer denies the ordinary title of Christian to Catholics. This emissary of the Bible Society writes: “The question now asked on all sides is—Are the Philippines at last to be opened to missionary effort? Personally, I feel that a non-sectarian, but strictly evangelical, mission, aiming [103]at the Christianization of the whole territory, is what would succeed best.” We may gather from the whole tone of this Protestant missionary review what a low type of Protestantism it represents, a type largely made up of self-presumption, ignorance, and fanaticism. Throughout the paper Catholics are not once designated Christian. It speaks of the nineteenth century being the first century of Christian missions, ignoring all the apostolic work of the Catholic Church. It says in another place that there were no Christian Chinese at the beginning of this century, ignoring the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who have known and loved Jesus Christ since the days of St. Francis Xavier, numbers of whom sealed their faith with their blood. It divides the population of the country into pagans, Romanists, and Christians—the latter, of course, being Protestants of one denomination or another. To such absurd lengths does religious rancor bring it, and all connected with it. Catholics give the title of Christian to all who are baptized and profess belief in the Divinity of Jesus Christ. They would not deny it even to the Rev. Mr. Hykes, bad as he is. But perhaps our new missionary friends may be similar to those of whom Marshall speaks in his “Christian Missions,” who went out to evangelize the South Sea Islands, and taught the people that baptism was merely a ceremony not at all essential to salvation, thus showing their want of belief in baptismal [104]regeneration. At any rate, it will be news to the Filipinos to hear for the first time from these enlightened men that they are not Christians.

That these Bible scatterers can and will do harm there is no doubt. Already they have flooded Porto Rico with tracts and pamphlets, crammed with the usual vile charges against the Catholic Church and her ministers. But it is equally certain that they will never succeed in making the Philippines a Protestant country. It is a matter of notoriety that Protestant missions are not overwhelmingly successful in any part of the world, and that the funds are kept up in most instances by glowing and rosy-colored, if not altogether accurate, reports, sent by the missionaries to their supporters at home. The review which I have just quoted is forced to acknowledge that in Brazil, after thirty-five years’ work, there are only eight thousand Protestants out of a population of sixteen millions. No less than eight American Protestant Missionary Societies have been working there together, well supplied with funds, as is always the case; and yet this is the result. In fact, eight thousand may not be the result at all, for the missionaries have, very often, peculiar methods in the science of statistics. In Mexico, too, they have been at work for many years unmolested by the authorities, and yet they have but wretched results to show for themselves at the present day. They make no impression either on the rich or [105]the very poor; any successes they have being amongst the impecunious middle classes, the children of whom they teach gratuitously in their schools, and feed and clothe, and who carry away with them from these schools, as the principal result of the religious training they receive, a bitter hatred of the Church in which they were born. Just as in Mexico, so the Protestant missionaries are sure to make proselytes among the same classes in the Philippines, from which classes we know that the promoters of the rebellion have been mainly recruited; but the better classes and also the poorer, whatever their shortcomings, have the old Faith and are intensely devoted to the Catholic Church. These are no more likely than the people of Mexico and Brazil to be led to accept the mutilated form of Christianity which will be presented to them by Mr. Hykes and his friends; unless, indeed, there is such a deplorable dearth of priests that they will be left without instruction and guidance.

There are grave problems ahead which will tax the wisdom of the American Congress far more than the military occupation of the country. John Foreman, who spent some years there, and claims to be a Catholic, advocates (National Review, September, 1898) the disendowment of the Church as a necessary financial measure which would bring a certain amount of relief to the colonial treasury. With the exception of £3,000 a year paid to the Archbishop [106]of Manila, and £1,500 to each of the three other bishops, it is difficult to see how the endowment comes in except as a measure adopted by every civilized State in dealing with its uncivilized subject races; and unless the United States is prepared to abandon the rôle of civilizer, she will be obliged to keep up the paltry endowment made in the past by Spain for that purpose. The Church in the Philippines is, on the whole, self-supporting. She is in the position that the Church in France, Spain, and Portugal was before the Revolution, which, when it appeared successively in each country was followed by a seizure of ecclesiastical property. The salaries paid to the clergy in those countries are given as a compensation for past robberies. The writer has been at pains to get at the truth in this matter and has put himself in communication with a Dominican Friar, who lived for twenty-seven years in the Philippines, and now holds the distinguished position of Rector of the Spanish-Dominican College, in Rome. From him the writer has received the following information regarding the landed estates of the Friars, and the salaries paid to them by the Spanish Government. As far as he knows all these estates were acquired by purchase, and were not given by the Government; they hold the title-deeds of them in their possession. He is not prepared to say whether on their first introduction to the country, three centuries ago, the Government [107]made them grants of land; but we ourselves may infer from the early history of the Dominicans there, that whatever they got was from the early Spanish colonists and the converted natives as free gifts. He adds that in any case the introduction of agriculture is due to their exertions. The Friars who ministered to the spiritual wants of the people may be placed in three categories. There were, first of all, the ordinary parish priest, who lived among a settled Catholic population. He subsisted on his benefice, which is not Government property, and was endowed by no subsidy from the Government. Secondly, there was the missionary parish priest, who lived in a parish where the majority are Catholics, but which also contained a proportion of the heathen. He received some salary from the Government, but much less than that given to the missionaries pure and simple, who lived in the midst of an entirely heathen population. These latter, whose business it was to civilize as well as convert the people to Christianity, and to teach them agriculture and the mechanical arts, were paid according as the mission district was large or small. In the large districts they received £200 annually, and £50 a year was paid to the native priests who acted as their assistants and curates. In the smaller districts the sum allowed was £100. The Jesuits, too, on their return to the Philippines some forty years ago, whence they had been banished in the middle of the last century, got an annual [108]subsidy as compensation for the lands they formerly possessed, which had been confiscated by the Spanish Government of the day. Something also was given towards the education of young Franciscan missionaries, and they were allowed their passage out from Spain. The figures we have quoted are modest enough, seen in the light of modern colonial salaries and expenditure. A continuance of the very moderate subsidies allowed to the missionary Friars by the Spanish Government would no more mean a union between Church and State than did the “contract” system which was sanctioned by Congress up to 1894, for dealing with the education of the North American Indians. According to this system, both Catholic and Protestant missionaries were paid by Government according to the number of pupils who attended their schools, and these schools, of course, were taught on strictly denominational lines. That system had most beneficial results as long as it lasted, and was acceptable to the Indians. Its abandonment in favor of the public-school system has resulted in the crying injustice of compelling Catholic Indian fathers and mothers to send their children to certain schools to which they have a conscientious objection.1 [109]

The school question is one of the gravest problems that the American Government will be called upon to face when her troops have effectively occupied the Philippines. One of the cries of the rebel leaders is for the secularization of the schools, and this cry, emanating from infidel and secret society sources, will assuredly be echoed by the Protestant ministers. It was these latter who, seeing their ministrations rejected by the Indians, raised the agitation against the “contract” system.

It is a shame and a wonder to find professed ministers of religion joining in a cry with the professed destroyers of religion. Secularization of education is always the first cry among those who oppose the Catholic religion. According to the showing of Dr. Parsons, it was attempted and sometimes successfully carried out in Colombia, Chili, and Ecuador, in which latter country the bishops were banished because they protested against it. Yet in spite of the anti-Christian spirit, exhibited in this and in many other ways, Dr. Parsons makes it clear that the masonic lodges in Peru actually receive aid out of the funds supplied to Christianize (according to sectarian ideas) the natives by the Protestant American public.

The notorious ex-Indian commissioner Morgan, now a Baptist prophet, has already sounded a [110]characteristically aggressive note on this point, and is conjuring the Government to drive the Catholic religion out of all the schools in Cuba, a movement already accomplished in the eastern part of the island. Morgan says: “Here is a field opened for the missionary spirit, such as the young people of our country have never yet seen. To carry thither and plant the seeds of civilization, and to do this in the joyful confidence that all official assistance is assured to them, will doubtlessly fill with enthusiasm hundreds of ambitious young teachers.” We may wonder what Morgan means by “official assistance” given for the spreading of Protestantism among a Catholic people, when, according to theory, the American Constitution does not support one form of religion over another. But theory is one thing and practice is another; and though in theory Church and State are entirely separate, the theory has not, in the past, hindered the United States from giving substantial assistance to Protestantism. This is how the case stands for America. Rightly or wrongly she has taken over an enormous Catholic population in the East. If she is not able to make any concession on the score of religion, or to stretch a point to meet the wishes of the people and govern them according to their ideas, then it is only consonant with reason and justice that her Constitution, which never contemplated colonial empire, will have to be modified to meet the exigencies of [111]a situation unimagined by its original founders and makers. But, in reality, is any modification of the Constitution necessary in order that religious instruction may take place in the schools of the Archipelago? In Ireland there is no State Church, and yet the National School System is so arranged that religious instruction can be given for half an hour every day of the week. The system is in theory undenominational, but in practice denominational.

An early solution of the difficulty might be some such procedure as the following. Let the parish priests be managers of the schools, and have a voice in the appointment of properly certified masters and mistresses, and let a fixed time be devoted to religious instruction every day. If the Protestants succeed in attracting converts, and are able to gather a sufficient number of children in any place to form a school, they can receive the same treatment as regards payment and control of religious instruction. Thus religious dissension would be reduced to the minimum. Secularization of education would tend to drive every form of religion out of the people, for Protestantism could not hope to make headway for a long time in the Philippines; as, to say the least, it would take some years for the ministers to get a sufficient knowledge of the various languages in use, and establish themselves in face of the opposition they are sure to meet with. It would also put [112]all the Friars in opposition to the Government, while fair treatment would make them its best friends, and urge them to keep the people as loyal to the American Constitution as they kept them to the Spanish Crown for three centuries.

If, then, the Government, after due inquiry, find that the vast majority of the people do not join in the cry for secularization, but desire to have the Catholic religion taught in the schools which their children attend, it would be nothing short of religious persecution to introduce the public schools system of the States into the Philippines. It is ever to be borne in mind that the new American possession in the Far East is one in which the great bulk of the people are practical Catholics who attend to all their religious duties.

To counteract the baleful influence of the Protestant missionary and Bible societies, it will be necessary for the Catholic Church in America to be alive to the new and grave responsibilities thus thrown upon her by the hand of Providence, and to send out English-speaking priests at once to the Philippines, to make up for the great dearth of priests caused by the excesses of the rebels. Before the rebellion they numbered between one and two thousand, a small number in comparison with the Catholic population. Fifty have been killed outright; many others have died of the hardships undergone in captivity; while several hundreds have left the country, apparently with no intention [113]of returning. Every year till last year, bands of enthusiastic young missionaries used to go out from the colleges in Spain to fill up the gaps in the ranks of the Friars, caused by sickness and death. That perennial source of life and strength can no longer be relied upon under the new conditions. The energies of the Spanish Friars will most likely be expended in Spain itself, where the lack of priests is still severely felt, and in developing their great and flourishing missions in China, Japan, Tonquin, and Formosa.

It is a matter of astonishment that the Church in the United States has up to the present no organization for supplying foreign mission. Perhaps the struggle to keep abreast in numbers with the growing Catholic population has absorbed all her energies. But now, for the first time in her history, she must cast her eyes beyond her boundaries, and send speedy help to the millions of children who have been given to her keeping, and whose voice may be heard from across the wide ocean, calling to her for spiritual help and ministration. Let her gaze steadily and thoughtfully on the vast harvest of souls given unto her. She shall reap where others have sown and planted. Let her gird herself to the work, and go forth and gather with joy the good wheat that others—the poor Spanish missionaries—have sown in tears and cultivated through much tribulation.

A fact of interest in connection with the aspect [114]of our subject under consideration is the challenge sent to Archbishop Ireland by an American Presbyterian of authority in his sect. He tells the Archbishop in effect that if the Catholic Church in the United States will undertake the missionary equipment of the Philippines, his sect will gladly withdraw from the field, and devote their efforts to Africa instead. Without attaching any more importance to this declaration than it deserves, especially as it is founded on the false assumption that one Gospel is preached by Catholic priests in Washington and another in Manila, we may, nevertheless, infer from it that these men believe they would have a much easier task in dealing with the Spanish missionaries than with Catholic missionaries from the States. Without saying anything in disparagement of the learning of a body of men which has produced a Gonzalez, one of the greatest philosophers of the century, we believe that American priests, being more in touch with modern times and more open to modern ideas, could give them valuable lessons in the conflict between the Church and the world, as it is carried on in our own days. It is not by profound theological arguments that we can deal with men who can neither understand nor appreciate them. Priests are wanted for the Philippines who can make their voices heard beyond its boundaries; who can mould public opinion by means of the daily Press; who can keep in touch with the politics [115]and legislation of the United States; and can bring public opinion there to bear on unjust and unfair treatment, if anything of the kind is attempted against the Catholics of that unfortunate Archipelago.

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Since these chapters were prepared for the press there has come to hand from the ex-missionary, referred to in the previous pages more than once, additional and valuable information.1 Though it embraces various matters, we think it better to give it altogether, as it possesses a peculiar authority and interest of its own, coming as it does from a Friar who lived in the Philippines for twenty-seven years, and who knew the country well in its normal and peaceful state, long before the Freemasons had wrought havoc in the relations between the priests and the people.

1. Those who were principally engaged in writing against the Friars for the past few years, and injuring their prestige at home, were the civil functionaries and military officers, who for the [117]most part lived at Manila and knew next to nothing about them and their doings. These men were biased by anti-religious ideas implanted in them by an irreligious education. It is easy to estimate the effect of an enormous correspondence of this kind, leaving Manila every fortnight, and passing into the hands of politicians in the mother-country, especially as there was nothing to counteract its influence on the part of the Friars, who did their work quietly and earnestly, and had very little correspondence with Spain at all.

2. The parish priests were ex-officio inspectors of the primary schools, but, having no voice in the appointment of masters and mistresses, and finding unsuitable persons thrust on them, were forced in many cases to retire from the schools in disgust, and limit their connection with them as much as possible.

3. The parish priests were also ex-officio presidents of certain municipal committees, and were supposed to help in the appointment of justices of the peace and petty governors, by sending in reports of the qualifications or otherwise of the nominees. The system worked well for a long time. But, latterly, owing to the new spirit in Manila, where the persons in office seemed leagued against the Friars, these privileged communications invariably leaked out; and if the parish priest, as in duty bound, laid bare defects and deficiencies the first to hear of it would be the person of whom [118]they were told. This was naturally a constant source of irritation and loss of prestige. The officials seemed to take a delight in lowering the parish priest in the eyes of the better class of natives. If the parish priest ventured to advise the governors as to what was best to be done in the interests of the communes, especially with regard to the secret societies, the governors would laugh, call him a visionary—an innocent man. No wonder, then, that the parish priests gradually began to retire within themselves, and leave growing evils unchecked, when they saw all their endeavor balked by the powerful opposition of the civil and military governors. This untoward state of things left the rebels free to mature and carry out their plans.

4. Here is an instance of how badly this state of things reacted on the country. The introduction of the new Penal Code was a great blunder of the Government. It was unnecessary; the natives were all opposed to it, and the strength and extent of that opposition was well known to the Friars who lived in the midst of the people. Under normal conditions they would have advised the repeal of the Code, and their advice would have been taken. But they were forced to remain silent while the Government in its folly was putting the obnoxious Code in force. If they had warned the Government, instead of getting the respectful hearing to which they were entitled, by their long experience and their intimate knowledge [119]of the people, they would simply have been dubbed reactionists.

5. How foolish it was of the Government to alienate the most loyal Spaniards in the whole Archipelago, the most distinctively Spanish element,—the Friars. They were almost ultra-loyal, and did their best to inspire feelings of loyalty in the breasts of the natives. They were powerful bodies with a strong bond of cohesion, having large interests in the country. They had glorious traditions to look back upon and keep them up to the ideal they had formed of their mission martyrs, a history to remember with pride; and all around them a Christian people, the fruit of their apostolic toil and that of their predecessors. The officials, on the other hand, were mere birds of passage, who took no real interest in the country. It was a case of every one for himself; every official keeping his eye on Spain with a view to an early return, while he went through his appointed work. It is remarkable too that in the Philippines there is no class of old rich Spanish families such as are to be found in other colonies; the families are all of yesterday—the riches in the hands of Chinese merchants, and the foreign trade in the hands of the English and Germans.

6. It used to be said that the Friars wished to have a hand in everything. The three important departments of justice, finance, and military affairs were outside their province altogether, and these as [120]purely secular matters they never touched. The complaint arose from their being ever ready to preach against sedition and disloyalty, and to use their moral influence publicly and privately for that purpose. But the Friars for the sake of the people did take part in other than purely spiritual concerns, and the activity of mind it engendered was personally a great help and relief to them. The general rule is that young priests, coming over for the first time, suffer a great deal from that ennui to which all classes of Europeans are subject to in the Archipelago. Gradually the sense of the sublime duties to which they have vowed themselves, and the example of the older brethren work a wonderful change in them for the better. They then begin to throw themselves with ardor into their work, and identifying themselves with the people among whom their ministrations lie, take a great interest even in their temporal affairs, and are glad to help them over their difficulties, especially those arising between them and the governors. Any friction between the governors and the Friars has generally arisen from the latter being prompt to defend the rights of the natives.

7. It is untrue to say that the Friars did not wish to spread the Spanish language. What they were opposed to was the folly of trying to teach the Christian doctrine and some other elementary knowledge in a language not understood by the people. In this matter they gave their candid [121]opinion to the Government that it was impossible to teach Spanish in out-of-the-way rural schools. But in towns they taught in Spanish, and taught the Spanish language and literature. They used to induce parents to send their children to Manila for the purpose of learning Spanish.

8. Regarding their opposition to the rebellion from the pulpit, in private conversation, and by means of the press, they fought the secret societies, its principal cause, and the propagation of evil and irreligious literature. They pointed out these evils on several occasions since 1887 to the governors, and were told in reply that these societies were of no importance, that they had nothing to do with the rebellion, and, in fact, that the preparations of the rebels were of no serious consequence. General Weyler was the only governor who gave them a hearing. With that solitary exception the official element remained incredulous. The secret society of the “Katipunan,” the compact of blood, and the enrolment of levies, were all discovered by the Prior of Guadalupe, who sent a report of it to General Blanco three months before the rising took place. Padre Mariane Gol exposed the intentions of the lodges a long time before Aug. 19, 1898, and also gave notice of concealed deposits of arms, and a detailed account of what took place at Manila on the arrival of the Japanese ship Konga.

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