The Friars in the Philippines

by Ambrose Coleman

Most Rev. Dr. Nozaleda, O. P.

Archbishop of Manila.

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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.