Motive for this exposition. Truly, your Excellency, if extremely troublesome circumstances, by which Spanish authority in the archipelago is threatened, and the bitter campaign (or better, conspiracy) of defamation and anti-monastic schemes, incited against us, especially since the outbreak of the insurrection, did not compel us to talk, very willingly would we leave it to politicians to occupy themselves with the problems that concern this country, and we would maintain the silence that has fittingly been our norm of procedure for many years, not speaking except when questioned officially, being jealous, by that manner of retirement, of avoiding the criticism which has so often been heaped upon us with audacious flippancy or malice, that we meddle with the temporal government of these islands.
But now the hour is come, when, as loyal patriots and constant supporters of Spanish authority in Filipinas, we must break that silence, in order that one may never with reason repeat of us, either as religious or as subjects of España, that terrible accusation of the prophet, canes muti non valentes latrare.[3] The hour is come, also, when we must emerge in defense of our honor, atrociously blemished in many ways, of our prestige that has been trampled upon, of our holy and patriotic ministry, which has, finally, been subjected to the most terrible calumnies and the most unqualified accusations. Though private persons may at any time make a noble renunciation of their good name that has been defamed, offering to God the sacrifice of what civilized man esteems highest, never is that allowed in any form, according to the teachings of the holy doctors of the Church, to public persons, to prelates, to superiors, to corporations, who must defend and preserve their prestige, their credit, and their reputation, in order to worthily fulfil their respective functions. A religious corporation discredited and publicly reviled, is in its class like a nation whose flag is insulted or whose laws are disavowed. It should die struggling for its honor, rather than allow its good name to be trodden under foot, and its rights to become unrecognized and unrevered.
Abandonment of the religious corporations and their patience and prudence under these circumstances. Truly, one cannot qualify us as hasty and imprudent, in that we now address ourselves to the exalted authorities of the fatherland. We have borne patiently the continual insults and vilifications for more than eighteen months of masons and filibusters, open or hidden, in newspapers, clubs, and public assemblies, who have attributed to us the blame for the insurrection, and heaped dishonor on our persons and ministries by the most unjustifiable attacks, cast in their majority in the mold of demagogism and free thought. With Christian meekness have we endured the return to the Peninsula of a multitude of persons who have resided a greater or less period in the islands, who have shown so little honor to our habit and profession; but if, instead of being religious, we had been seculars, and if, instead of being a question of ecclesiastical corporations, it had been one of civil or military corporations, they would have refrained from speaking ill of us—and we can be quite sure of that, and there are eloquent daily proofs of this assertion—for the effective means that such corporations generally practice would have tied their tongues, and would have made them recognize their flippancy and their injustice by imposing a vigorous corrective to their extensions. We religious have no sword; we cannot pronounce judgment; we do not glitter with gilt braid; we do not belong to a corporation, whose individual members take part in the government of the fatherland, or in exalted considerations of the same; we are neither military men nor functionaries of the judicial or administrative profession; we do not have weight in any political party; we do not intervene in elections; we do not form (for conscience forbids us) great federations that become feared; we do not incite the public, except to obedience and submission to all constituted authority; we are unable in determined cases to distribute appointments, or offer promotions or remunerations; we are not accompanied by a fattened retinue of friends or flatterers, who defend us for their own personal advantage, and who are the blind paladins of the general, of the politician, of the exalted dignitary, of the opulent banker; neither have we any influence over the press; we do not possess a nucleus of attached partisans to shout for us and overexcite so-called public opinion: in one word, we are without all the methods that are used in modern public life to gain respect and fear, to influence the nation, and cause all the shots of slander or ignorance to strike ineffectually against us.
The religious of Filipinas, far remote from Europa, alone in their ministries, scattered even throughout the farthest recesses of the archipelago, without other associates and other witnesses of their labors than their dear and simple parishioners, have no defense other than their reason and right, which, although established on justice and law, and secured by the protection of the divine Providence—which mercifully has not failed us hitherto and which we hope will not fail us in the future—do not have, nevertheless, in their favor (nor ever, although we might have done so, would we avail ourselves of them) those most powerful modern auxiliaries which are attaining so much vogue and so great success in societies in which the great Christian sentiments having grown cold, reason is not heard easily unless supplied with the force of cannon or with the armor-plate of the high bench, of vast political parties, or of fearful popular movements.
Alone with our reason and our right, although with our conscience satisfied at always having fulfilled, yea always, our duties, of having been as patriotic as the greatest, or more so, and of having fulfilled the obligations of our sacred ministry, we have endured silently and in all patience, in accordance with the advice of the apostle, the insults and vilifications, even of persons to whom we have offered in Christian sincerity our affection and civilities, even by persons who call themselves very Catholic, but who, perchance, infected with the contagion of the practical Jansenism of certain present-day reformers, forget the remark of that great Christian emperor, who said that if he should see a priest who had fallen into any frailty, he would cover him with his cloak, rather than publish his weakness.
Alone, with our reason and our right, and confident that reason would at last clear the pathway, and that light would at last illumine the dense obscurity created by hatred of sect, by the separatist spirit, and by flippancy, envy, and the false zeal of certain persons, we have endured the insinuations, made in the Cortes [parlamento][4] of last year which showed scant respect to the orders; the assertions made, not only in private, but also in centers of great publicity, and by persons of considerable popularity in military circles [politica militante], that the religious prestige of Filipinas was so broken that it was necessary to substitute it with armed force; the publishing of the recourse of an eminent politician, sacrificed by anarchy, to the orders for information and advice in Philippine matters, as a dishonorable censure; the grave accusations directed against us, as well as against a most worthy prelate, in a memorial presented to the senate, although veiled under certain appearances of impartiality and gentle correction; the different-toned clamoring from day to day, with more or less crudity, in order that the historic peninsular period of 1834–40 might be reproduced in the islands, and in order that measures might be adopted against us, so radical that they are not taken (and the discussion of them is shameful) either against the centers of public immorality, or against societies and attempts that have no other end than to discatholicize the nation and to sow in it the germs of thorough social upheaval.
Why the religious have been silent until now. We believed and thought that our prudence and long silence, adorned with the qualities of circumspection and magnanimity which religious institutions should always possess, ought to be sufficient for discreet and fair-minded people, so that they would immediately impugn those accusations and form a judgment by which those repeated attacks would not make a dent in our credit and prestige. We supposed that that campaign of diatribes and reproaches would vanish at last as a summer cloud formed by the effluvia cast off from the forges of masonry and filibusterism.
But instead of being dissipated the storm appears to be increasing daily. The treaty of Biac-na-bató[5] has again placed in the mouth of many the crafty assertion, made now by the rebel leaders that the institutes of the regulars have been the only cause of the insurrection. The secret society[6] of the Katipunan, which is extending itself throughout the islands like a terrible plague, has established by order of its Gran Oriente,[7] the extinction of the religious as one of the first articles of their program of race hatred. In the Peninsula and here, the masons, and all those who, in one way or another, second them, have rejuvenated [recrudecido] their war against us. Manifestos have been published in Madrid, in which misusing the names of Filipinas, measures highly disrespectful and vexatious to the clergy are demanded. Even in the ministry of the colonies, although officiously, persons have managed to introduce themselves, who, pursued by the tribunals of justice as unfaithful do not hide their animadversion to the religious corporations. Now, if we were to continue silent in view of all these circumstances, our silence would be taken with reason as cowardice, or as an argument of guilt; our patience would be qualified as weakness; and even firm and sensible Catholics who recognize the injustice of the attacks directed upon us, could with reason infer that we were stained, or that we had come to such a prostrate condition that one could with impunity insult and mock us, as if in downright truth we were old and decayed entities whose decadence is the last symptom of death.
Prius mori, quam fœdari,[8] said the ancients; and the most loyal Maccabæans, “It is better to die in the battle than to see the extermination of our nation and of the sanctuary.”[9] As long as the corporations exist, they will glory, as they ought, in repeating with St. Paul: “Quamdiu sum Apostolus, ministerium meum honorificabo.”[10] We have always endeavored to honor our ministry, and we shall always continue to honor it, now and in the future, by the grace of God, which we trust will not fail us. Consequently, we do not vacillate in addressing ourselves today to the exalted authorities of the nation, taking shelter in our confidence, that, though we are poor and helpless, and have no other protection than our spotless history, our immaculate honor, and our secure rights, we are talking to those in whom intelligence and good sense are brothers to nobility of thought, who are always ready to listen, especially to the poor and weak, and in whom their respect and love to Catholic institutions and to the so eminently glorious and meritorious title “Regular Clergy of Filipinas,” shelter them from the suggestions of sects and the prejudice of anticlerical and separatist parties.
They are persecuted because of their religious significance. What reason have the religious corporations of Filipinas given that they should be persecuted with so great passion? Ah! your Excellency, that reason is no other than because they are very Catholic, because they are very Spanish, because they are effective supporters of the good and sane doctrine, and because they have never shown weakness toward the enemies of God and of the fatherland.[11] If we religious had not defended here with inviolable firmness the secular work which our fathers bequeathed us: if we had shrunk our shoulders in fear before the work of the lodges and before the propagation of politico-religious errors that have come to us from Europa; if we had given the most insignificant sign, not only if not of sympathy, yet even the least sign of mute passivity, to the advocates of the false modern liberties condemned by the Church; if the flame of patriotism had become lessened to us; and innovators had not met in each religious in Filipinas an unchangeable and terrible adversary to their plans, open or hidden: never, your Excellency, would we religious corporations have been the object of the cruel persecution now practiced on us; but on the contrary, we regulars would have been exalted to the clouds, and so much the more as our enemies are not unaware that, granting the influence that we enjoy in the archipelago, our support, even if passive and one of mere silence, would indisputably have given them the victory.