Upon the morals of the Friars I can only touch. That some of them brought up families of sons and daughters is beyond question. Such were guilty of violating their vows of celibacy rather than of debauchery. On this point the moral standard of the Filipino people was not rigid, and women were rather proud than otherwise of the parentage of their Friar-fathered children who were often brighter, better looking and more successful than the average Filipino. The truth is that this charge was urged with more eagerness and emphasis after the Filipinos began to appeal to the American government than during Spanish times, and when the standard of morality in the Filipino priesthood of the period was considered, it seemed as if the accusers thought the charge would have more weight with those they sought to influence than it did with themselves.
The three great orders of St. Francis, St. Augustine and St. Dominic owned, in different parts of the Islands, more than 400,000 acres of the best agricultural land, and this they rented out in small parcels to the people. Their income from these immense holdings was not what a prudent and energetic landlord would have realised, but they paid no taxes, while the Filipino was taxed in every possible way.
In the province of Cavite alone the Friar estates amounted to 131,747 acres, and it was in the province of Cavite, which is just across the bay from Manila, that the two insurrections against Spain, or rather against Friar domination, began.
When we arrived in Manila all but 472 of the 1,124 Friars had either been killed or had fled the country. In each of the uprisings many of them lost their lives, and many more were taken prisoners. Indeed, the last of them were not released until the rapid advance of the American troops in our own encounter with the insurrectos made it necessary for the insurgent army to abandon all unnecessary impedimenta. All the Friars remaining in the Islands had taken refuge in Manila.
Strange to say, this resentment against the Friars interfered in no way with the Filipino’s love for the Church. With a strong and real emotion he loves the religion which has been given him; and the elaborate and beautiful forms of the Roman Catholic Church are calculated, especially, to make a powerful appeal to his mind. It is really an astonishing commentary on the character of these people that they should be able to rise against the men who administered the sacraments which they so deeply loved and revered. Or, is it more of a commentary on the conditions which caused the uprisings?
Without exception the Spanish Friars had been driven from their parishes, and the most burning of all the burning political questions which the Commission met and had to settle, was whether or not they should be permitted to return. It was impossible to make the people understand that the government of the United States and the government of Spain were two different matters, and that if the Friars were returned to their parishes they would exercise no secular functions of any kind. The people had the proverbial dread of the “burnt child” and no amount or kind of reasoning could move them from the position they had taken, nor could any of them, from the highest to the lowest, talk calmly and rationally about the subject. The one point upon which the Filipinos were united was that the Friars should never be reinstated.
Universal agitation, uneasiness, fear, hatred, a memory of wrongs too recently resented and resented at too great a cost; these were the factors which made necessary the stand which the Commission finally adopted. The question with the Friars became one, largely, of getting value for their property, their title to which was never seriously disputed, and it was decided that on condition of their leaving the Islands, the insular government would undertake the purchase of their vast estates. The intention was then to make some arrangement whereby the lands might be sold back to the people in homestead tracts, and on terms which the poorest man might be able, in time, to meet.
It was to negotiate this transaction, involving the expenditure of $7,000,000 that my husband was sent to Rome the following year as an emissary of the United States government to the Vatican. This was in the time of Pope Leo, and it made a most interesting experience which I shall detail in another chapter.
The first thing, really, that the Commission undertook when they arrived in Manila, was the settlement of a definite dispute between the Church and the People as to which had the right to administer the affairs of the Medical College of San José. Their manner of procedure in this case instituted in the Islands a new and never-before-thought-of system of evenly balanced justice, and made a tremendous sensation.
The case was called: “T. H. Pardo de Tavera, and others, for themselves and other inhabitants of the Philippine Islands—against—The Rector of the University of Santo Tomas, a Dominican monk, and the Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church, represented by the Most Reverend, the Archbishop of Manila, and the Most Reverend, the Archbishop of New Orleans, Apostolic Delegate.” Its importance, under the conditions then existing, can hardly be
