Not less respect do they merit in their character as Spanish entities. Besides being here ministers of the official religion, they are public ecclesiastical persons, recognized by the state. They live under its safeguard, as do the military and civil entities. They have labored, and are laboring, for the fatherland, at least as much as any other class of Spaniards residing in the archipelago. And in the point of intelligence, within their respective profession and of morality and private and civic virtues, they rise not only collectively, but individually, to so great a height as the class that is considered the most high and reputable in the archipelago.
There is one most special reason and one of extraordinary importance which demands that that respect should be sanctioned by the laws and supported by customs, namely, that the religious in his respective duties, becomes, as a general rule, the only peninsular, and, therefore, the only representative of the mother-country in the majority of the Filipino villages. Consequently, Spanish prestige is greatly interested in that he be the object of such considerations and guaranties that these inhabitants far from seeing, as unfortunately they have not a few times seen, that he is despised and humbled, be daily more fortified in the traditional idea that their cura or missionary is, at once the minister of God and the representative of España, a lofty idea that has redounded, and redounds, so greatly to the favor of the mother-country, and says so much in honor of all the Spanish entities.
We came to the archipelago through our love to religion and España, and have remained in it more than three centuries, ready to continue here so long as conscience does not dictate the contrary to us. Gross temporal considerations do not move us, nor sentiments of pride and of mere personal dignity. In the fulfilment of our duties, we have striven to attain even sacrifice and by the grace of God, we shall continue the sacrifice. A good proof of this is offered the impartial critic by the present epoch of rebellions and insurrections. The cura and missionaries, in spite of persuasions that they were putting their lives in great danger by the continual plots of the ferocious Katipunan, have steadfastly maintained themselves in their posts, foreseeing that if they abandoned their parishioners, a general rising of the islands was almost certain. This procedure, if not heroic, is sufficiently near it, and has cost us many victims, snatching away our dearest brethren from us, some treacherously assassinated and others immolated by reckless mobs seduced by filibusters and masons. And although this sad sacrifice has seemingly not been bewailed and appreciated, as perhaps it ought to be by the loyal sons of España, we trust that God, the compassionate and generous remunerator of every good deed, will in His infinite mercy, receive it as a propitiation for the evils of this unfortunate country, and will have rewarded the martyrs of religion and of the fatherland.
Character and objects of this exposition. May the nation, government, and your Excellency, pardon this slight extension of our sentiments of dignity, offended as religious and as Spaniards. This is not a memorial of merits and services, since we have never solicited applause or recompense, which never constitute the lever of our labors. Neither is it a panegyric, which we are not called upon to make, and which we do not believe is wanting, since the history of the religious corporations of Filipinas detaches itself so patiently and cleanly in all kinds of just and upright progress. It contains some apologetic matter and much of most sensible complaint because of the unjustifiable injuries that almost daily are received by us. It is the weak expression of the profound bitterness that seizes upon us at contemplating and viewing from anear the condition of vast disturbance in which this beautiful portion of the fatherland finds itself. With the utmost respect and submission, laying aside absolutely whatever proceeds from political parties and much more from private persons, it tells the government with Christian simplicity and synthetically that it should adopt and maintain a perfectly logical criterion with regard to the religious corporations of Filipinas; and that, therefore, if it thinks, as is just and decorous, that we, the religious corporations, exercise a most lofty and necessary mission in the archipelago, honorable and worthy of the greatest consideration, of its own accord and without utilitarian considerations and false reasons of state, it so manifest clearly and with nobility, making a beginning by giving a practical example of that in its laws and decrees, and in its instructions to the authorities of these islands, and that it do not allow us to be annoyed or insulted; and so much the more since being weak and helpless, and bound as we are by religious weakness and patience, we have no other means of defense than our right and the protection of the good, and we can never appeal to the means of repression and influence to which we allude in the beginning of this expository statement.
But if the government, on the contrary, by an error that we would respect, not without qualifying it, in our humble judgment, as most fatal to the interests of religion and the fatherland, should believe that the religious have terminated their traditional mission here, let it also have the frankness to say so. We shall listen to its resolution calmly. But let it not imagine, in adopting measures which, attaching, although without claiming it, the privileges of the Church, our profession as priests and regulars, and our honor as refined Spaniards, that in practice it might appear that it was trying to burn one candle to Christ and another to Belial, that it was trying to please masons and Catholics, good patriots and separatists, by placing the orders in a so graceless situation that they might become like the mouthful that was thrown into the jaws of the wild beast in order to silence its roars for the time being.
Synthesis of the same. Such would happen if the secularization of the regular ministries; the secularization of education; the disamortization of the property of the corporations, or the expression of the liberty that belongs to them to enjoy and dispose of them; the declaration of the tolerance of worship; the establishment of civil marriage; the permission of every kind of association; and the liberty of the press became law. Such would happen, in what more directly concerns us, if the government continuing here and there its campaign against us, unjustifiable from every point of view, were to show by its acts that it actually conceives that we have been the cause of the insurrection, and that we are opposed to the progress of these islands, and to the unfolding of their legitimate aspirations. Such would happen, if the government, failing to rigorously prosecute secret societies, and to effectively correct the seditious ones who are exciting the ignorant masses of the people against the regulars and against all that is most holy and Spanish in the islands, should desire the religious to continue in their ministries, liable at any moment to be sacrificed, as is the terrible watchword of the sect, and which has already unfortunately occurred, without, perhaps, their having even the consolation that those sacrifices are appreciated.
If we religious are to continue to be of use in the islands to religion and España, no one can have any doubt that it must be by thoroughly guarantying our persons, our prestige, and our ministry, it must be by knowing that the fatherland appreciates and treats us as its sons, and that it must not abandon us as an object of derision to our enemies, and as victims to the rancor of masonry and separatism. Martyrdom does not terrify us, but only honors us, although we do not consider ourselves worthy of so holy an honor: but we do not desire to die as if criminals, enveloped with the censures of friends and enemies, and perhaps, abandoned and despised by those who ought to protect and esteem us.
That is the extremely gloomy and graceless situation in which the orders find themselves, especially since the beginning of the Tagárog insurrection, and above all, since the extension of the Katipunan, a situation that threatens to become worse, if the government becomes the echo of the filibusters, of the masons, of the radical elements, which, it seems, have conspired together to give the finishing stroke to the great social-religious edifice, raised in these islands by Catholic España.
By that no one should be surprised that we religious, placed in so imminent a peril, desirous of not offering abstracts to the policy of any government, and of avoiding the censure that we are the cause of the evils of the country and the bar to its progress, should choose the abandonment of our ministries, exile, and expatriation, in preference to our continuance in the islands in a situation, which, if prolonged for a longer time, will result as decidedly dishonoring to our class, and would make our permanence in the archipelago unfruitful.
We have fulfilled our duty here as good men; such is our firm conviction. Should we go elsewhere, there, by the grace of God, we shall also be able to fulfil our duty. And for that result, the holy see, if contrary to all our just expectations, it cannot succeed in making itself heard by the Spanish nation, will not deny us the opportune permission.