Note 7 — THE FRIAR VIEWPOINT

Nearly three centuries, since 1565, when the first Augustinians, the companions of Legazpi and Salcedo reached the Filipinas shores, until 1863, the year in which regulations were first made for primary instruction, outlined only hitherto in numerous laws and royal decrees which it was impossible to fulfil, as is proved, for almost three centuries, we say, of bold zeal bordering on the inconceivable, of constant anxiety and watching, of unusual effort, which borders on the heroic, and with remarkable expenses never paid back, ignored by most people, and recognized and praised by very few: are these not sufficient, not only so that the liberty to exercise the noblest charge which Church and fatherland have confided to them for centuries in the teaching of the schools, which is intimately associated with the teaching in the pulpit, be conceded to the parish priests, but that also by justice illumined by gratitude, the necessary law, moral force, aid, and support, for the exercise, with perfect repose and without any impediment, and more, without any asperity and struggle, of that sacred duty so full of trouble and bitterness for him, so full of results most beneficial for religion and fatherland, be conceded to him? If, then, one desire to concede to the parish priest the position which is in justice due him in education, if there is to be granted to the missionary that which the most rudimentary gratitude urges, it is of imperious necessity that that mortifying and abasing duality be radically destroyed, for it renders useless all the energies of the parish priest supervisor, and stifles his noble and disinterested aid offered without tax for the service of the holy ideals of God and fatherland. Perhaps the parish priest is deprived of this salutary intervention because such intervention is believed unnecessary, superfluous or prejudicial to the lofty interests of the fatherland or of the well-being of the native? Today necessarily more than ever, through the deep-colored dripping of the blood of the insurrection,7 one can see with the clearness of noonday that the intervention of the parish priest ought to be established in all the orders, in order that it might again take the lofty position which was overthrown thirty years ago. Is it, perhaps, because the intervention of the parish priests will be a barrier, or obstacle, even to the sustained mark of true progress in education in general, or of Castilian in particular? But this is perfectly utopian, and even an argument now of bad taste. The religious orders enemies of true progress! Perhaps they are not the ones who in their teaching have created everything today existing in Filipinas? Are not the religious corporations those who have always formed their ranks in the vanguard of science, and today especially both in the Peninsula, and in the Magellian Archipelago, do not numerous colleges nourish with special predilection on the part of the public? As an incontestible proof of this truth, let one concede without difficulty what shall afterwards be proposed as a supplement of that existing today.