Marcelo H.

Del Pilar’s La Soberenia Monacal en Filipinas, first

published in Barcelona, Spain, in 1889, and reprinted in Manila
in 1898

(translated by Dr. Encarnacion Alzona in 1957)

Its Political Aspect

The interference of the friars in the government of the Philippines is so

ingrained that without difficulty the friars control the status quo of the country in
defiance of the nation and the institutions.

In charge of almost all the parishes, their parochial mission takes on the double
character of a political organ and popular patronage. This mission gives the curate
great power in each locality; and this power, as it does not lose its monastic character,
is at the command of the regular prelates under whose guidance the parish priests
think, preach, confess, and act with marvellous uniformity.

Perhaps the guarantee of the moderating power of the parish priests may be
self to society to balance and harmonize the interests of the people and the institutions;
but the fact is that the convents are opposed to this equilibrium and harmony.

The hatred and distrust between both elements constitute the life of the
convents. To frighten the government with the rebelliousness of the country and
frighten the country with the despotism of the government- that is the system that the
friars have so skilfully evolved to be able to rule at the expense of everyone.

They offer the government to suppress the country’s rebelliousness and the
government gives them all its autocratic support, going to the extreme if the friars so
demand, while they portray the ruler as the personification of tyranny and despotism.
They offer the people to soften that tyranny and the people place its wealth in their
hands so that they may defend them against official rapacity.

The basis of monastic wealth is the lack of union between the people and the
government and it is necessary to foster it by fanning the resentment of the first and
the despotism of the second. To achieve this, they count on the diversity of languages
among the rulers and the ruled; and to preserve that diversity, to impede popular
education, and to avoid at any cost that the people and the government come to
understand each other, are the best way of keeping them in perpetual antagonism.

In the Philippines, however, religious amortization is very conspicuous.

Ignorance and fanaticism encouraged by the monastic institutions and ignoring the
claims of blood relations as if they were contrary to divine law have been responsible
for centuries for the immense number of disinherited families. The best lands, the best
estates, thus passed to the control of monastic communities.

Today the convents are the millionaires of the country; their large funds cannot
be alienated. Their lands are cultivated without the stimulus of the owners and with
discouragement on the part of the tillers. They are leased and the rent increases from
time to time and in proportion to the improvements introduced on the land. On more
than one occasion the voice of poverty has exhaled touching complaints; but who
listens to the voice of poverty? Monastic properties are subject to land titles of ten per
cent and the increase in their income ought to favour the government treasury, but
does it perchance?

We don’t know. The government finance office relies on the sworn statement of
the convents, and what official would dare verify that Olympics declaration, as in
view of monastic predominance government employees are daily in danger of losing
their positions? In the year 1887 the provincial government of Laguna tried to get
information about the increase in the income of the lands in Calamba belonging to the
Dominican friars. It found out that the annual income of five thousand pesos has been
sextupled, amounting to more than thirty thousand pesos. The finance office learned
about it; and ... nothing more.

The Filipinos pay direct taxes consisting of the personal cedula, urban tax,
industrial subsidy and additional municipal tax, provincial tax, and personal loan;
and besides these, the indirect one of the markets, vehicles, horses, stamps and
surcharges, slaughter of cattle, river tolls, and others. Well then; besides the direct
and indirect taxes there exists another which, though it does not figure in the financial
plan of the Philippines, nevertheless is a burden on her interests.

This is what we would call the tax of the religious festivals. The papal decree of
2 May 1867 aimed to relieve the Filipino Catholics of this burden by reducing the
number of feast days and ordering that each diocese have only one patron saint to be
named by the Holy See, and in fact this was done. But it is evident that the will of the
Pope is ineffective and impotent so far as the regular curates in the Philippine
Archipelago are concerned.

Each parish church has a tutelary patron of the town besides the patron saint of
one or more confraternities and patron saints of secondary importance venerated in
some churches according to the curate’s devotion. Their respective saint’s days are
celebrated with pomp at the expense of the people. For each celebration are collected
large sums of novena, masses, sermons, processions, music, bands, singers, sacristans,
bell-ringing, bell-men, curtains, altars, silver candelabra, chandeliers, candles, and
the like. During these celebrations the townspeople have to keep open house,
entertaining lavishly. In addition, there are fireworks of thousands of skyrockets that
reduce to smoke the savings of the fervent devotee.
 Aside from these numerous and costly festivals, in every district where fifty
families dwell, a chapel is erected at a cost of at least one thousand pesos; there are
some costing five, ten, and fifteen thousand pesos. The dues of the stole and the foot of
the altar are a legitimate source of revenue of the priesthood. They are not just mere
alms as they think, they are a just remuneration; Jesus Christ and common sense
declare that he who works deserves to eat.

But the exaggerating collection of some dues without the sanction of Jesus
Christ hurt the interests of the Catholics and leads them to impious reflections and to
inquire in the light of economics about the productive value of this social element
whose manifestations are purely those of the consumer.

The Reverend Fathers are empowered to name the persons who ought to be
deported; and the Government solemnly declares that the parish curate’s opinion
suffices so that the deportation may not be arbitrary.

It is no longer fanaticism that builds this opulence, no: it is fear of the group
which has been raised to the power which, with no one stroke of the pen or a low
whisper, can kill the happiness of one who obstructs or does not cooperate in the
development of its schemes of exploitation.

Its Religious Aspect

In the performance of their duties, the municipal officials depend on the parish
priest. To report the conduct of a citizen the testimony of one hundred members of the
Principalia is not enough. The essential requirement is the curate’s approval. The
signature of the curate is necessary to the census of residents in a municipality, to the
conscription of eligible young men, to formalize accounts and other official
documents; to everything and for everything the curate’s signature is an essential
requisite.

On the other hand, there exists no ruling prescribing the conditions under which
the curate should grant or withhold his approval. The curate approves it or denies it,
according to his will or the order of his prelates.

Supreme orders are carried out if the crate so pleases. If the superior authority
tries to demand an energetic enforcement of his orders, the curate informs the prelate
of his convent and this one obtains dismissal of the public official. His powerful
argument which produces a magical effect is that national integrity is in danger.
 The foundation of a building is to be laid and the curate does not like it, then
national integrity is in danger; public health demands that the corpses should not be
brought into the churches; well nothing, national integrity is in danger, and the same
litany in everything.

The Guarantee of national integrity is not the church nor can it be in the friars;
it is in the same popular aspiration of fusing and identifying the interests of the
Philippines with those of the country that gave her political life, that shaped and
educated her to be worthy of modern civilization and sheltered her from the
covetousness of foreign nations.

To consolidate the fraternity between Spain and Philippines is the best defense
of national integrity; it is Spain’s ideal; it is the dream of the Philippines. If the divisive
plan of the friars offers advantages to monastic exploitation, it however jeopardizes
the future of the Philippines as well as the highest interest of both countries.

Even if we assume that the divisive plan of the friars succeeds and for the
reason the antagonism between the rules and the ruled intensifies, what means of
pacification do the convents offer? They will not be the government forces, for in the
case the power of monastic saddles would not be necessary. Neither can they
command public opinion. This rejects them: the cry for the immediate expulsion of the
friars is unanimous. Above all: if the friars command public opinion, from whom will
come the danger to national integrity?

Ah, let the government consider that, let Spain consider that. As for us, we don’t
believe it prudent to leave national integrity in the hands of the friars. Neither it is
good for the reigning monarch nor for any political interest does that monasticism
continue to be the arbiter of the fate of Spain in the Philippine Islands.

Its Economic Aspect

The laws that regulate the foundation and development of convents in the
Philippines are undoubtedly based on the belief that monastic life is unproductive.
Numerous are the regulations pertaining to the manner of supplying their need for
wine, oil, and other things of the kind.

But the abundance found in the convents makes laughable the pity of the
government. The Philippine government lacks resources to undertake public works; on
the other hand, the monastic orders build grand and costly convents in Manila and in
each parish of three thousand souls, they erect a spacious palace for the residence of
the regular curate.
 The government establishes primary schools in each town. The government
houses are made of light materials, like those destined for the tribunal which hardly
approximate the stable of the friar curators.

The government finds a thousand obstacles in collecting taxes from the tax-paying
public; but the monastic orders empty without the difficulty the purse of the same
public in return for heavenly promises.

The government worries about meeting its peremptory financial needs, but the
monastic treasuries are overflowing with money so that their only worry is how to
send away from the country their copious savings that foster the banking interest of
foreign trade.

The government refrains from creating new sources of revenue in order not to
burden Filipino interests, but the friars invent every day new forms of devotion, some
very costly, and the public pay, not because of fanaticism, but rather, for fear of
displeasing the friars whose power they know has sent many innocent victims to exile.

Because of this, there is a notable contrast between the poverty of the

government and the opulence of the vow of poverty. Let us analyse this economic
phenomenon.

The amortization of lands is fatal to agriculture everywhere. Experience and

economics have shown the needs for laws of disentail. In the countries where such wise
measures have been adopted, capital was immediately channelled to greater and
better production. The sale of religious objects that rise in price by reason of priestly
blessing constitutes a true and indisputable simony; and notwithstanding, one of the
principal sources of income of the monastic order is the trade in religious objects.

The ready-made belt without priestly blessing costs and is sold at four or five
pesos a hundred, but the moment the priest blesses it and the belt passes on to the class
of spiritual things and becomes an object of papal and Episcopal indulgences, from
that moment the price rises one hundred per cent at least. To the new member of
confraternity, it is sold at sixty-two cents, four eights of a peso each belt, the price
going down until twenty-five cents minimum when the buyer is an old customer.

What is true of belts is also true of scapulars of the Recollect fathers, of the
rosaries of Dominican fathers, of the cords of the Franciscan friars, and of various
others too many to enumerate.