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CHAPTER XIX.

THE GOVERNMENT AND RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS.

THE path that Philippine officials have been called to tread has been far from easy. Conditions were new. Problems familiar in some aspects in our own national past took on features wholly unfamiliar, and called for expedients never before used by rulers of American blood. Nearly all the members of the Civil Commission were inexperienced in Oriental life, or had acquired little more than ordinary familiarity with conditions prevailing among Asiatic peoples in the tropics.

In the religious aspects of their duties there were the most vexatious and delicate complications. Here was a people who had no acquaintance with a government that rigidly separated things that differ so widely as the functions of the Church and State. Spanish leaders had no knowledge of the possibility of governmental neutrality in religious matters. These were yet under the leadership, in Manila, at least, of priests equally blind and warped. If officials did not accede to all petitions for civil interference in religious squabbles they were denounced as Protestant sympathizers. If they insisted that no Catholic should teach religion in the public. schools, the conclusion was instantly drawn that they proposed to make these schools Protestant. Stories were set afloat to the effect that Protestant ministers and missionaries were largely represented in the body of publicschool teachers, and that their faith was threatened.

When Protestant missionaries appeared on the scene. the situation was still more complicated. Friars could not comprehend that toleration did not mean support. Doubtless many of these mediavalists yet believe that the officials are secretly supporting the Protestant movement with public funds, and giving us official aid and comfort in other ways, and all this for the simple reason that they try to be fair and maintain inviolate separation between the Church and State, which has been our policy from the dawn of the Republic.

With the advent of the Independent Catholic Church. movement, better known as the Aglipay movement, from the name of the priest who stands forth as the leader, confusion became more than ever confounded for the Catholic of conventional ideas as to the oneness of things civil and religious.

One case will illustrate what is meant. In the summer of 1901 the Filipino priest of Tarlac, province of Tarlac, Father Eusebio Natividad, complained to Governor Taft that the Municipal Council of that city had attempted, by ordinance or resolution, to regulate the fees which he was charging for religious functions performed by him as priest. Governor Taft at once addressed a letter to the civil governor of the province, Captain Wallis O. Clark. The letter was intended to meet all similar cases, and was therefore ordered put into a number of native languages and given the widest possible publicity. It was the plainest possible statement of our historic position as to the relegation of Churchly affairs to Churches, and the management of civil affairs by officials of the State. It is too long to reproduce here. but was what would have been considered even platitudinous in any American circles, so simply did it put the familiar truths and some of the chief reasons for our

national adhesion to them. The application of the law to the case in hand was in the concluding portion of the letter. It was as follows:

"What fees or compensation shall be charged by a minister of religion for religious services performed by him is a matter wholly within the control of the Church authorities, and is one in which the civil government, whether municipal, provincial, or insular, can have no voice whatever. No one is obliged by civil law to partake of the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church; no one is required by law to solicit from the priest the burial ceremony, or the marriage ceremony of the Catholic Church. If he does so, under the government as it now exists in these islands, he does it voluntarily. If, however, his religious conscience requires of him that he should secure the performance of any such ceremony by a priest of the Catholic Church, and deems the fee exacted excessive, he can have no recourse to civil government, but must apply for relief to the Superior ecclesiastical authority in the Catholic Church."

The governor took the necessary executive action to protect the aggrieved priest, and had reason to suppose that Catholics, of all men, would applaud the fairness of his action. But not so. Within a few days there appeared an attack on him and his administration, which, better than any one utterance of the friar party that has come to my attention, illustrates their psychological state. It was published by an organization of laymen and friars called "Centro Catholico," at their headquarters, No. 49 Calle Cariedo, Manila. The heading and portions of it are given. They are excellent samples of pages and pages of stuff that has appeared in tracts and periodicals in criticism of official actions equally fair:

"TO THE CONFLICT, FILIPINO CATHOLICS!

"Not many days since a miserable paper, rabidly im

pious, saw light in this capital, a monstrous abortion of perversity, a banneret of enrollment in the interests of apostasy, in which freely and unmasked the cry is raised, 'War against God!'

"To arms, then, warriors of Jesus Christ! The challenge is thrown down! To the strife, Catholic soldiers! Not with resort to worldly arms, but to the powers of prayer, of faith, of a union of all true Catholics, of public manifestation of our religious sentiments, to defend them by all the means that are in our power.

"Yes! War against God! This is the motto of this. infernal proclamation. They say, that they can not, nor do they desire, to intervene in religious questions,' then, lying with hateful cynicism, they excite the people to make in all parts manifestations of distrust against the Catholic priests. War against God! they have said; and in truth what is intended by this procedure except the overthrow of the apostolic ministry, preaching, the administration of the sacraments in due time as ministers of the Church; and in overthrowing these, is it not resisting the Church itself, the bishops, the Holy Father, God Himself, in a word? And all under the guise of a pernicious liberty! Buffoons! Pusillanimous and false politicians! You see the poor Filipino, despised and rejected, and now you allure us with the fatal error of impiety and irreligion. You desire to eclipse the sun of the moral world, which is the Catholic faith. We shall walk in darkness: the scene of Sennar will be repeated; the Philippines will be as Babylon. . . . Will you consent to have your faith torn from you by violence? Will you consent that it disappear from the Philippines, because it so pleases four rickety brawlers [meaning, no doubt, the members of the Commission]-the religion in which you have been educated? . . The Catholic Center protests in your name against the nasty, miserable paper, and its reprobate propositions. We despise these talkative pigmies. Away with cowardice! Complete unity; close alliance, and Forward! What if the tempest increases and hell roars? Here are our ada