Note 1 — The Spanish Friars, After 1898

With the American dominion came free cult. No public money is disbursed for the support of any religious creed. No restraint is placed upon the practice of any religion exercised with due regard to morality. Proselytism in public schools is declared illegal.1 The prolonged discussion of the friarsʼ position and claims encouraged them to hope that out of the labyrinthine negotiations might emerge their restoration to the Philippine parishes. For a while, therefore, hundreds of them remained in Manila, others anxiously watched the course of events from their refuges in the neighbouring British and Portuguese colonies, and the unpopular Archbishop Bernardino Nozaleda only formally resigned the archbishopric of Manila years after he had left it. Having prudently retired from the Colony during the Rebellion, he returned to it on the American occupation, and resumed his archiepiscopal functions until the end of 1899. Preliminary negotiations in Church matters were facilitated by the fact of the Military Governor of the Islands at the time being a Roman Catholic, an American army chaplain acting as chief intermediary between the lay and ecclesiastical authorities. The common people were quite unable, at the outset, to comprehend that under American law a friar could be in their midst without a shred of civil power or jurisdiction. There were Filipinos of all classes, some in sympathy with the American cause, who were as loud in their denunciation of the proposed return of the friars as the most intransigent insurgents. They thought of them most in their lay capacity of de facto Government agents all over the Islands. It cannot be said that the parish priests originally sought to discharge civil functions; they did so, at first, only by order of their superiors, who were the de facto rulers in the capital, and afterwards by direct initiative of the lay authorities, because the Spanish Government was too poor to employ civil officials. What their functions were is explained in Chapter xii. The complaints of the people against the friars constituted the leading theme of Dr. Rizalʼs writings, notably his “Noli me tángere,” and the expulsion of the four obnoxious Religious Orders is claimed to have been one of the most important reforms verbally promised in connexion with the alleged Treaty of Biac-na-bató. The allegation of the prelates and other members of the regular clergy who gave evidence before the American Civil Commission in 1900, to the effect that the Katipunan Society members invaded the parishes only to murder the friars and rob the churches, should be weighed against the fact that two hundred thousand Filipinos were ready to leave glowing life for grim death to rid the country of monastic rule. The townspeople, apparently apathetic, were afraid to express their opinion of the friars until they were backed up by the physical force of the Katipunan legions. It was the conflict of material interests and the friarsʼ censorship which created the breach between the vicar and the people. The immorality of the friars was not general and by no means the chief ground, if any, for hostility against them; the frailties of the few simply weakened the prestige of all and broke the pedestal of their moral superiority. My own investigations convinced me that the friarsʼ incontinence was generally regarded with indifference by the people; concubinage being so common among the Filipinos themselves it did not shock them in the pastorʼs case. Moreover, women were proud of the paternity of their children begotten in their relationship to the friars.