Note 9 — ANDA’S MEMORIAL, 1768

“In effect, it can be said the friars trained clerics in order afterward to employ the latter in their own service; for under the name of coadjutors each cura kept in his convent one or two clerics, according to the necessities of the parish, who served him as if they were slaves, and who suffered every sort of humiliation and annoyance. It was not only in those times [of Anda] that the situation of the Filipino cleric was so melancholy and abject; but, in the midst of the increasing prosperity of the friars and their curates, with equal pace increased also the wretchedness of their coadjutors and the intolerable misery of their existence. In order to justify their conduct toward the Filipino clerics, the friars resorted to the pretext of their unfitness; but not only is this argument calumnious, but, even if it were accepted as sound, it does not justify the bad treatment which they give the cleric, and would demonstrate, besides, that the education which he receives from the friars is incomplete and defective.” (He cites Archbishop Santa Justa as rebuking the regulars for thus calumniating the clerics, saying, among other things, “Is it not notorious to every one of us here that the spiritual administration all devolves upon the coadjutor cleric, the father minister reserving to himself only the charge of collecting in his own house, without leaving it, the parochial dues. How can they deny this, when it is so public? If the clerics are incapable, how can the ministers in conscience allow and entrust to them the spiritual administration of their villages? If that be not so, how dare they discredit the clerics with the strange, not to say unjust, censure of their being unfit and incompetent?”) “In these later times, the friars, since they could no longer rail against the clerics in that fashion—for they do not, at least so much now, insist on their old accusation of unfitness, because the Filipino clerics have proved that they include men of as great learning and virtue as the friars, and even more—resorted to a political reason, making the Spanish government believe that the Filipino clerics were every one filibusters. This weapon was of good results for the cause of the friars, but fatal for the Filipino clergy, who found themselves horribly trampled upon in 1870, on occasion of the famous rebellion of the Cavite Arsenal; for three of their most distinguished and revered members, Fathers Burgos, Zamora, and Gomez, were executed under the calumnious accusation of being leaders of the rebellion, and a great number of other distinguished Filipino priests were sent to the military posts or into exile. Public opinion flung back upon the friars the terrible responsibility of sentences so iniquitous; but since then the new and safe weapon of ‘filibusterism’ has been used more and more against the Filipino clerics.” (Pardo de Tavera, note 8, pp. 52, 53.) ↑