The Lamentable Error of the Bishop of Cebu
The prelate who accused the public schools in the form above mentioned has committed a lamentable error. For my part, I can say that the accusations awakened in me a desire to investigate the causes of immorality and of the perversion of customs which the said prelate, and we with him, all regret. According to those who have studied the mentality of the majority of our people, it is evident that superstition is the enemy which we all have to combat and that is the cause of many of the moral errors which we observe. The regular friars as well as the secular clergy confess that the mass of the people still finds itself subject to the superstition inherited from our predecessors—the superstition which could be called genuinely Philippine, that which comes from the old belief in the nunu, in the asuang, the anito and all the spirits of the old idolatry preached before the implantation of Catholicism by the Spanish missionaries.