Note 10 — THE FRIAR VIEWPOINT

It is known by all, and is demonstrated quite clearly, that the traditional laws for teaching, if admirably penetrated by the spirit, profoundly Catholic, of their epoch, were very deficient, and in no small measure impracticable in Filipinas, because they lack almost all the means indispensable for the happy attainment which legislators and missionaries ardently desired; equally notorious is it, and also demonstrated, that the absolute lack of legal rules and regulations to facilitate their obligation accentuated more strongly the deficiency of those laws. We say legal, because the few regulations that there were, and which were practiced, were those of which mention has already been made in the Práctica del Ministerio of 1712, circulated as was compulsory, by their provincial among the Augustinian parish priests, revised in the provincial chapter of 1716, and amplified and printed in 1731; and the Instrucciones morales y religiosas [i.e., Moral and religious Instructions],10 printed in 1739 for the use of the Dominican fathers—a lamentable lack which disappeared with the publication of the regulations of December 20, 1863.