Note 20 — Letter Written by a Citizen of Manila to an Absent Friend

On one Friday in Lent, the fifteenth of March, I was present at the convent of St. Augustine; Fray Diego de Ochoa of the same order came out to preach. At the beginning, he read a notice which said that Father Lorenso Goreto would preach on the following Tuesday at the church of the Society of Jesus, on the good thief.20 He added that that feast of the thief was very suitable for the Society, characterizing its members as thieves. Later in the course of his sermon, he brought in the balance which, as I have told your Grace, the accountant Juan Bautista de Zubiaga presented against the Franciscan fathers concerning the hospitals. He declared it to be an Inquisition case, and that, if that holy tribunal did not take cognizance of it, he himself would seize him. This he said with loud words and a menacing aspect. And, so that your Grace may have a good laugh, I will tell you his argument for saying that it was an Inquisition case—namely, that the pontiff had seen in dreams St. Francis and St. Dominic with their shoulders holding up the church of San Giovanni in Laterano, which was about to fall—a sign that their sons must keep the Church of God upright by means of their glorious labors, as if for that reason no one of the said orders could do anything wrong. Besides the fact that your Grace will see that this vision is not of the Divine attestation—although it pertains to Christian piety to believe it, as so many others—I would never finish if I should try to tell your Grace the disorder that has reigned in the pulpits all this year. I only tell, in general, what occurred this past Lent, and even since Advent. I and many others have gone through curiosity to hear the preachers of St. Dominic, St. Francis, and the Recollects of St. Augustine. Most of the sermons have consisted of satires against the governor, the Audiencia, the judge-conservator, and the fathers of the Society of Jesus; and in utterances so extravagant that they caused a great scandal, and in things ridiculous and unworthy of the pulpit. The latter they made a professor’s chair for the avenging of their passions, instead of one for teaching the doctrine of Christ. Your Grace can see what fruit the audience would get from it.