Note 5 — THE FRIAR MEMORIAL OF 1898

But instead of being dissipated the storm appears to be increasing daily. The treaty of Biac-na-bató5 has again placed in the mouth of many the crafty assertion, made now by the rebel leaders that the institutes of the regulars have been the only cause of the insurrection. The secret society6 of the Katipunan, which is extending itself throughout the islands like a terrible plague, has established by order of its Gran Oriente,7 the extinction of the religious as one of the first articles of their program of race hatred. In the Peninsula and here, the masons, and all those who, in one way or another, second them, have rejuvenated [recrudecido] their war against us. Manifestos have been published in Madrid, in which misusing the names of Filipinas, measures highly disrespectful and vexatious to the clergy are demanded. Even in the ministry of the colonies, although officiously, persons have managed to introduce themselves, who, pursued by the tribunals of justice as unfaithful do not hide their animadversion to the religious corporations. Now, if we were to continue silent in view of all these circumstances, our silence would be taken with reason as cowardice, or as an argument of guilt; our patience would be qualified as weakness; and even firm and sensible Catholics who recognize the injustice of the attacks directed upon us, could with reason infer that we were stained, or that we had come to such a prostrate condition that one could with impunity insult and mock us, as if in downright truth we were old and decayed entities whose decadence is the last symptom of death.