Note 26 — Statement of Capt. Olegario Diaz1

Note 26. No sooner had Almighty God consummated the grand work of the creation, the culmination of which was the breathing into man of an immortal soul, than the devil, the father of evil, jealous of the attributes given by God to man, made his bold attempt to destroy God’s immortal work. From that moment to this present the spirits of evil have carried on an unceasing warfare against what has been for the glory of God. The Monastic Orders ever since the days of their birth have had to contend against these powers of evil; and there is therefore little necessity for surprise that those who were employed in such work as were the unscrupulous persons who came to the archipelago to sow ruin in the consciences of the people and scandal in society, should carry on a bitter campaign against the Religious Orders to whom was owing every jot and tittle of the civilization and culture enjoyed by the Filipinos. The Monastic Orders have ever been the bulwark of Christianity, and as such have had to bear the brunt of the battle. Europe owes the solid foundation of its political, social and religious life to the Religious Orders, which, during the ages in which the Huns, Goths and other barbarians overran and devastated those lands, hoarded up in the nooks and corners of their monastic dwellings the seed which, when afterwards sown, was to become the stout tree of civilization which should spread its sheltering branches to the four corners of the earth. One of these branches drawing its fullness of life and vigor directly from the trunk, extended to these far off islands and, casting its shade over the embruted mankind here existing at that time, wrought a change over it no less marked than that wrought over the European peoples. From the day in which Father Urdaneta, that intrepid Augustinian, set foot upon Philippine soil, till the day upon which the hydra-headed Katipunan appeared in the land, the Monastic Orders have been the one great source of all that was really useful and beneficial to the inhabitants of the archipelago, although at times the moral interests of the people were not the commercial interests of the country.