In addition to the telegram sent to His Excellency, the Governor-General and Viceroy, on the first of this month, that he might bring it officially under your Excellency’s notice, which the said authority informs us has been done, we, the Superiors of the Congregations of the Augustinians, Franciscans, Recollects, Dominicans, and Jesuits, have the honor of presenting this Statement to his Majesty, King Alfonso XIII., and, in his royal name, to Her Majesty the Queen Regent, Dona Maria Christina, to the President and Members of the Crown Ministerial Council, and more especially to your Excellency as Colonial Minister. We address this Statement directly to your Excellency, according to law and custom, that you may deign to bring it under the notice of the exalted personages already mentioned, and even if it appears desirable before the nation, duly assembled in the Cortes of the kingdom.
The time has come for us faithful and constant upholders of Spanish rule in the Philippines to break our traditional silence. The hour has also come to defend our honor, which has been so much assailed, and our holy and patriotic ministry, which has been the object of the most terrible and unjustifiable accusations and calumnies.
We have borne patiently with the Freemasons and insurgents, known and unknown, who in their newspapers, clubs, and public meetings, have for the last eighteen months insulted and vilified us, accusing us, among other things, of having fostered the rebellion. We have discovered to our sorrow that a number of Spaniards, having resided in these islands for a longer or shorter period as the case might be, on their return to the Peninsula have spoken of us in terms which they would not have dared to employ if in place of being priests and friars we had been laymen, or if instead of being ecclesiastical congregations we had belonged to civil or military bodies.
The religious of the Philippines, far away from Europe, alone in their ministry, scattered to the furthermost corners of the Archipelago, and without any other companions and witnesses of their labors than their own dear and simple parishioners, have no other defence save right and reason. Conscious that we have always been loyal and patriotic subjects, and have always fulfilled our duties and the obligations to our holy ministry, we have borne patiently and silently, according to the advice of the Apostle, insults and calumnies from the very persons to whom we had offered our services in all Christian sincerity. We have kept silence under insults from persons calling themselves forsooth Catholics, but who are infected with the practical Jansenism of certain latter-day reformers. We even suffered in silence certain false information, most dishonoring to the religious Orders, to be brought before the Cortes last year. It was asserted, not only in private, but in important, centres, that the prestige of the religious Orders in the Philippines was so shaken that it would be necessary to drive them out by armed force. It was also declared, as most dishonoring to a great nation like Spain, to have commissioned friars to furnish information about the Philippines, and to have asked their advice in the form of a memorial presented to the Senate. In addition to all this, the gravest accusations, some directed against a worthy prelate, were brought against us, veiled, however, under the guise of impartiality and gentle correction. Before long the clamors will be renewed in a different tone; and we shall see the reproduction in the Archipelago, with more or less cruelty, of that historical period in the Peninsula of 1834–1840.
REASONS FOR OUR SILENCE TILL THE PRESENT TIME.
We believed that a wise and prolonged silence, added to that prudence and magnanimity which should always distinguish religious orders, would have sufficed for good and discreet persons, and that they would have repelled the accusations, and formed a judgment that would be proof against these repeated attacks. But, instead of calming down, the storm appears to increase daily. The Treaty of Biac-na-Bato has furnished to many the opportunity of renewing the crafty insinuation, nay, bold affirmation, already made by the rebel chiefs, that the religious institutes were the sole cause of the insurrection. One of the chiefs of the “Katipunan” secret society has declared in his paper, The Grand Orient, which, like a plague, is still scattered over the islands, that one of the first articles in his programme is the expulsion of the religious Orders. In the Peninsula as well as here, the Freemasons and others who second their efforts have recommenced the war against us. They have published manifestoes at Madrid, in which, misusing the name of the Philippine natives, they demand vexatious and disgraceful measures against the clergy.
If under these circumstances we still remained silent, our silence would be attributed, and rightly so, to fear or to guilt. Our patience would be called weakness; and even sensible and solid Catholics, who recognize the injustice of the attacks made against us, might be led to believe that we were really stained with guilt, or that we had fallen into such a state of moral prostration, that we could be ill-treated with impunity.
THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS PERSECUTED BECAUSE THEY UPHOLD RELIGION.
On what grounds are the religious bodies persecuted? Simply because they uphold true and sound doctrine, and have never shown a weak front to the enemies of God and of their country. If we had shown ourselves pusillanimous in sight of the works of Masonic lodges, and in presence of the propagation of the politico-religious errors imported from Europe; if we had given the faintest mark, not of sympathy, but even of toleration, to the men who were scattering broadcast false notions of liberty condemned by the Church; if patriotism had cooled in our hearts, or if the innovators had not found in each Philippine religious an intractable and terrible adversary to their plans,—the religious congregations would never have been disturbed. On the contrary, we should have been extolled to the skies, the more so because our enemies do not ignore the fact that, were we to help them in the Archipelago, were we to give them our support, or at least were we to remain silent, we should thereby give them an undisputed victory.
But they know well that our standard is no other than the Syllabus of the great Pontiff, Pius IX., so frequently confirmed by Leo XIII., wherein all rebellion against the powers is so energetically condemned. Yea! truly they hate us, and under different names and on divers pretexts they are making such a cruel war upon us that it would seem as if the Freemasons and Revolutionists had no other enemies in the Philippines than the religious bodies.