Since the discovery of the two Americas, the king has been seignior of them in temporal matters, and in spiritual, royal patron and pope, and as such has made appointments to all the secular and ecclesiastical employments of the cathedrals, with the advice of the auditors; and the curacies are filled by the vice-patrons, with preceding examination and proposal by the ordinary. In this matter there is seen the monstrosity in Filipinas that, excepting the prebends of the cathedral, all the curacies are given by the provincials to their subjects without examination, proposal by, or notice to, the ordinaries or the vice-patrons, with absolute despotism and independence, despoiling the king and ordinaries of the so well-known right that belongs to them.
Remedy for this evil
Until seculars are provided, the provincials must cause their subjects, by right and the councils, to subject themselves to examination and proposal by the ordinary to the vice-patrons; and it is an intolerable abuse that the provincials make those appointments without giving notice to the latter.
SIXTH ABUSE
It is an abuse, born of the preceding, that the archbishop of Manila and the three bishops of Nueva Cáceres, Nueva Segovia, and Cebú, residing in their dioceses, may be bishops in partibus, since, under pretext of the exemption of the regulars, they may not ask the latter how they administer their obventions or how they live, which in truth is the height of scandal.
Remedy for this evil
The venerable Palafox, in La Puebla, conquered the regulars by a formal judgment that as parish priests they must remain subject to the ordinary; but after his removal to Osma those who were expelled succeeded in nullifying this and other just decisions. The same thing was obtained in Manila by Archbishop Camacho; but after he was transferred to the bishopric of Guadalajara in Nueva España the same thing happened as in La Puebla, so that the regulars have continued and still remain in the same abuse—which will cease by ordering them to obey the judgment secured by Camacho (or by the council, which is the same thing).[15]