Nothing in particular would be said about this general movement in favor of social morality if the attitude of public opinion would not have that mistaken and dangerous bias which is given it by certain elements which at all times have been an obstacle to the instruction of the Filipino people. These elements, taking advantage of the preoccupation of public opinion to combat vice and purify public morals, instead of simply supporting this movement and strengthening it justifying its usefulness by the good itself which it seeks to accomplish, launches a political campaign which consists in alarming the people making them believe that immorality increases, that the social ills are growing, that national life itself is endangered thru the fault of the reformers as a result of the new régime in vogue in the Philippines since the loss of the past sovereignty. They take advantage of the current of public opinion in favor of public morals, to make it appear that the democratic form of the Government, the English language, the lay schools, coeducation, and Anglo-Saxon civilization are the causes of the supposed growth of immorality: Such is the program of certain people!
Our Enemies
Those who in a great measure are guilty to their nation for the misfortunes that befell the Filipino people that resorted to revolution and rebellion to free themselves from a régime opposed to their progress and happiness, forgetting their incapacity to fulfill the obligations which, in the name of their country, they assumed here and which were the causes of the political failure of the past colonization, they to-day wish to defend their interests in our country pursuing their policy which would only produce dissension among the Filipinos. Under the pretext of interesting themselves more than we do in our own welfare, considering us to be blind and incapable to know and distinguish the good from the bad, deeming us eternal indios of inferior mentality, they seek to take us whithersoever they will, where it suits them, thru the dark path where none see but they, they who guide or wish to guide the indio, the eternal child who ought to allow himself to be led!
In a foreign weekly published in Manila, we read the following: “Dedicated to the search of the enemies of the progress of the Filipinos, we find them in every bucket, in every cabaret; in the peaceful invasion of Japanese in the Philippines; in “panguingue,” in billiard games, in the prevailing immorality in the theaters, in the novel, in the cinematograph and in the postal card; and above all and over all, in the lay school.” He who thus expresses himself seeking to arouse Filipino hatred against the Japanese, to create suspicion first and trouble afterwards, is a stranger, and in the language in which he himself writes are written the theatrical works and the immoral novels that come to the Philippines.[3] In his language, too, were promulgated those laws and regulations in our country instituting cockfighting, lottery, billiard, created as sources of revenue for the State—things which we the Filipinos could not oppose in the old political régime without at the same time opposing the government itself which made vice a source of revenue and which, to increase its funds, had to encourage such vices, similar to opium in official smoking-rooms. Of the lay school we shall now speak presently.
The Work of Calumny and Hatred
Considering the nature of this campaign against our present day institutions, and painfully impressed by the great harm which this disastrous work of calumny, hatred, distrust and pessimism must have upon the progress and tranquillity of us, the Filipinos, I deem it my duty to speak when I am led to think that the limit has been reached by a document which came to my hands. It is no less than a circular which a high prelate directs to the curates of the parishes of his diocese, and which deals with public instruction.[4]
Hell Threat
The whole document is an attack against the Government schools, simply because in them the Catholic religion is not taught, threatening with hell those parents who send their children to such schools. At the close it says as follows:
As a first step, after you have let the parents see the social evils which result from a Godless school, such as crime against purity, murder, suicide, rapine and robbery, disobedience against civil and ecclesiastical authorities, in short, the corruption of customs, all the seasoned fruit of those lay schools, your reverences should influence them to declare, in writing or communications which they should address to us, to the government without euphemisms their irrevocable and decided will that Christian education be given them in the schools. We, for our part, will look after the sending of these petitions to the Legislature.