Note 29 — Letter Written by a Citizen of Manila to an Absent Friend

After the feast of the Holy Ghost, on the following Wednesday, May 14, it appears that the three orders of St. Dominic, St. Francis, and the Recollects, determined to observe the interdict and the suspension of divine services. Consequently, they did not open their churches; and, although they opened them later, the altars were draped in mourning, and they did not say mass. On the contrary, they gave out that it was a mortal sin to hear it, for the interdict and the prohibition to say mass could not be raised. These were observed so strictly that the religious did not ring their bells at the Ave Marias or at the Animas, as usual, as if that were a prohibited action. That shows that it was not devotion but fear, as the other Portuguese said.29 But I ask those fathers, if it could not be removed, why did they ring their bells at midnight on Saturday, and why, during the three days of the feast of the Holy Ghost, the doors of their churches were open while they said mass, and celebrated the other divine offices? For to say that that feast is privileged by law, like Corpus Christi day, was correctly stated when there is only an interdict, but not when there is a suspension of mass—as is the common opinion of the doctors and the general practice. Thus that is demonstrated; besides which, if the cathedral and the other secular churches have lifted the interdict and the suspension of divine services, the religious were obliged to follow the action of the mother-church, according to a Clementina that has been cited to me. Thus the fathers of St. Augustine and those of the Society acted very prudently, in concurring with the cathedral.