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.
Failure of the Missionaries
According to their own confessions, these missionaries, after three centuries of preaching, have failed to eradicate those superstitions incrustated in the conscience of the people. We must accept their declaration as a faithful recognition of the failure of their religious mission. I am not interested in, nor do I discuss, the religious point of view, but the importance of superstition in social life, its pernicious influence upon the evolution of morality. What undoubtedly results from the narratives contained in that literature which constituted the only reading of the people is the promotion of ignorance spreading in a very effective manner all the superstitions aforementioned and adding to them a wealth of errors which unfortunately governs the mentality of the mass of the people.
Not only the so-called Indios the ones concerned; the sons of the Spaniards of pure blood or those mixed with Indios as well as the Chinese mestizos are also accused of these superstitions. All these, all of us Filipinos, are included among the individuals infected with the leprosy of superstition fomented by the absurd miracles of the Novenas and it cannot be said that it is an evil particularly of the Filipino race but also the inhabitants of the Philippines in general.
In order that education be useful it has to form in the individual the sense of responsibility thru the free exercise of reason. The fulfillment of duty shall be its objective and in order to obtain this goal, it is highly necessary to develop the will in man with which he shall fight the animal instincts, the sentimental impulses, all that is contrary to the dictates of reason.
Logical mentality (mentalidad lógica), to know what we should do and to enable us to plan out a just route that we should follow; will (voluntad) to enable us to exalt the dictates of reason above the impulses of our own desires: such is the object of lay education, the education in the so-called godless schools, here in the schools of the Government as in the college of Beata Imelda directed by the Dominican fathers under the norm of Japanese ideas translated in imperative laws, situated in Taihoku, capital of Formosa.
The reading of the so-called miracles of the type that I have before cited makes the impossible appear possible, thanks to mysterious influences which are easy to secure, not thru industry, but simply thru unworthy and low means and reproved by good morals such as humiliation, adulation, and propitiation. A benefit is not asked or expected thru some positive good that we do, thru fulfillment of duty out of which results a positive good which is a right; resort is had by means of favor, by gaining the benevolence of a saint, making him believe that he is liked, adored, and admired, seeking to exalt his vanity and, thru his mediation, gain the good will of God, not as a benefit conferred directly to him who asks, but in consideration of the merits of the mediator. Nothing can be imagined that is more immoral, more primitive, more contemptible. The celestial court turns out to be a court more corrupt than those of the autocrats condemned by history: the court of the Khans, the Sultans, the Bysantine Emperors, Mungols, Persians, Tartars, all the barbarians who have abused humanity and who have personified injustice and justified revolution and massacres.
A society whose members expect everything thru favoritism does not know what emulation is; when an individual finds a means as simple as that offered in the Novenas to secure what he desires following the line of least resistance, does not resort to the exercise of any noble activity, and, consequently, cannot perfect his faculties nor use them; an individual who expects to attain the absurd and improbable cannot know the existence of immutable laws which rule the universe; the individual who expects to secure what he wants thru the medium of a celestial patron cannot conceive the God of Justice nor can he really be a useful member of society.
Favor, propitiation, exception, protection, grace, preference, predilection, are incompatible with what a God should be, with the Ideal of civilization, with the supreme aspiration of humanity which is Justice.