The Height of Absurdity
Is it possible to invent or suppose greater absurdities than those here mentioned? Nevertheless, in order not to prolong this address, I shall only present a few of the cases which are cited in abundance in these little booklets (opusculos), distributed in great profusion among our people. What logic, what reasoning can we expect of minds nurtured with such absurdities, fed up with fakes of such puerile nature that one can hardly believe them to have been narrated by men of simple common sense?
The mattress where San Vicente died has become possessed of the virtue of making miracles; by merely lying on it on different occasions over 400 sick persons afflicted with various diseases became well (p. 32).
One time when San Antonio de Padua preached on the seashore it happened “that the fishes to whom he preached came out of the water and heard him with all attention.” No devotee ever doubts the coming out of fishes, nor does he interests himself in the solution of the physical, physiological, linguistic, and especially logical aspects of such an event, but the Novena to the Saint confirms it so (p. 20).
This lecture would be unduly prolonged if I were to mention all the absurdities that appear in the Novenas of which I have quite a collection, which constitute a real array of documents of positive usefulness for the history of the superstition which I have scarcely touched upon here. With what has been said there is enough to explain the origin of the immorality, the real cause of the predisposition to vice, the absence of a sense of responsibility, the natural explanation of what incomprehensible character formed of a mixture of sentiments which the missionaries have contributed to the Filipino, Indio, Spaniard, and Chinese, all influenced by the injurious spirit which pervades all that literature which is completely antagonical to reason. Such, and not the lay education, is responsible for this evil.
I am not here to formulate theories or to speak of a capricious hypothesis. Before an audience such as this which I have the honor to address, I need to weigh the value of my words and of my judgment. For this reason I have cited facts, repeating the exact words, not of the profane literature composed of the anonymous Corridos whose detrimental influence is well known, but the authentic texts of Novenas authorized by the ecclesiastical censorship for not containing anything contrary to sane morals, as it is said in the permits granted for their printing.
Nor have I thought for a moment of mixing religion in my criticism; nor is it in my power to vary the results or consequences that may result from the facts mentioned in the Novenas, which are the literature responsible for this state of puerile mentality, absolutely inadequate for an understanding of morals, composed of matter that paralyzes, rather than bring out, progress.
Morals is nothing but the triumph over one's self, thru which man does what he should and not what he wishes. In the immoral man there is no struggle between two tendencies, one against evil and the other against good. There is only the instinctive tendency; there is no rational control in opposition. What mastery over self does a man have who for the purpose of controlling his habit of dirty and obscene speech seeks the intervention of a saint? Lacking in will, dispossessed of any idea of struggle with himself, how can he triumph over himself? Slave to his own passions it might have seemed that the only thing that might control him was the punishment in store in future life; but this fear does not preoccupy him in the least since at the same time that he is threatened with eternal fire he is told the manner of evading it without ceasing to do evil.