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Show Work of Friars In Philippines An Impartial Writer Tells of Their Labors in the Interest of Civilization and Christianity. It is refreshing to get the true inward in-ward history of the Philippines -"5m an impartial writer. No branch of science has more sides than history. Facts and fables, the ridiculous and the sublime are woven together, printed and given to the world as history. Since the Filipinos became subjects of the United States their past history and that of the Friars have assumed 'o many different attitudes according to the prejudices of the different writers, that no intelligent opinion could be formed. That they were not up to the standard of our modern civilization, it is true, that their habits and customs were different from ours, one would naturally na-turally expect, but that their wholesale condemnation by prejudiced and sensational sen-sational writers, to which we have been treated from time to time, lacked honesty and sincerity of purpose, pur-pose, goes without contradiction. The writer, Stephen Bonsai, who wrote the following article for the North American Review is not a atholic, yet he is willing to give credit to the Friars for their work of civilization. He shows how in tne midst of many difficulties they succeeded succeed-ed in elevating the aborigines from their savage state to a civilized state. The original Ladrones became peaceable, peace-able, and under the benign influence of the Friars' teaching became Christians. The article written by one who has studied the past history of these islands isl-ands is both interesting and instructive instruc-tive and will appear in the following three issues of the Intermountain Catholic: Cath-olic: - The Work of the Friars. (By Stephen Bonsai.) (Reprinted by special permission from the October, 1902, issue of the North American Review. Copyright, 1902, by The North American. Review Publishing Publish-ing company.) "In most descriptions of the Spanish Span-ish regime in the Philippines, -the administration ad-ministration is spoken of as deriving its strength or its weakness from the union of church, and state. This view is not quite correct. It would be nearer the truth to say that the islands were held as a fief by the four great monastic monas-tic orders of the Roman church, and 1 that over them was hoisted in recognition recog-nition of their many benefactions the standard of the Most atholic Kings. "Typical of the history of the generations gen-erations that followed is the story of the rst expedition, which, sailing from Mexico, effected a permanent settlement settle-ment on the islands in the sprier of 1565, and shortly afterwards founded Manila. This expedition was du-:: .to the personal labors and popularity of Fray Andres Urdaneta, an Austin friar who had proved himself in many sea ventures a most daring navigator. He-was He-was also a cosmographer, a distinguished distin-guished mathematician, a soldier and a courtier. The nominal head of ih expedition was Lopez de Legaspi. wno figured in the ship's company as sailing sail-ing master. This was a personal selection se-lection of Urdaneta's, and it proved to be a happy one; though, when we learn that Legaspi had never fallowed -me sea, but had been a notary all his life in the City of Mexico, we comprehend the motive. underlying Fray Andres' choice. The Austin friar proposed thit he himself should lay the course of the frail caravel across the vacant seas to the islands of the painted pfople which Magellan had discovered. "In October, 1896, more than 300 years later, when- the first rebellion und-r Aguinaldo was making great headway and the bearing of Governor Ge'irtftal Blanco did not inspire confidence, Ine following cable, signed by the ar::ii-bishop ar::ii-bishop of Manila and the provincials of the monastic orders in the islands, was sent to the procureur of the Dominicans in Madrid: "Situation grave, rebellion rebel-lion spreading, apathy of Blanco inex- plicable. To save the situation, urg- j ently necessary, appointment new gov- , ernor general"; and within forty-eight j hours General Polavieja was designated j as Blanco's successor. As in the days of Urdaneta, whoever the figurehead might be, whether soldier or civilian, it was the friar who laid the ship's course; and when, as frequently happened hap-pened of recent yoars, the sailing master mas-ter sought to usurp the functions of the ghostly pilot, he was gently bu firmly put on shore. "This patriarchal system of government govern-ment by monastic missions, so much out of harmony with th? spirit of th times, received but survived many severe se-vere blows in the house of its friend3. Certainly the arts of 1SS3 and 18.13 promulgated pro-mulgated by the Spanish Cortes would have destroyed the mission system, but for the fact that tlm decrees of th Cortes did not then carry as far as they formerly did. When we arrived in the Philippines, jve- found the monastic orders or-ders still supreme, in all thi essentials of government, and the Spanish admiral ad-miral taking his instructions from the archbishop, rather than from the minister min-ister of marine. "The moment the American flag went up over the islands, the church Was divorced from the state; and the question ques-tion of the hour became, what to do with the friars now shorn of all their political functions. With this question in process of adjustment, upon the honorable hon-orable basis of fair compensation to the friars for all property to whien they can prove clear title, and with the assurance to the parishes that th-y can have, as their spiritual advisers, any priest or minister their choici may fall on, provided always he be not unfriendly un-friendly to the American regime, the time seems opportune for turning a deaf ear to controversy for a moment, and for examining the testimony cf facts as to the way in which the friars i have performed the mission confide! to them of civilizing the Philippine Indians. In-dians. "This is, indeed, a difficult task. Some of our most responsible officials in the islands have denounced the rule of the friars as a dark page in history, his-tory, as something too horrible to speuk about in detail. Indeed, the absence of detail and particulars in their accusations accusa-tions is very noticeable: but. from their point of view, perhaps it was better, as they said, to throw the mantle of charity over the closed chapter. The ' civil commission presided over by Judge Taft, on the other hand, has paid the friars, in the persons of their recent wards, the very highest of com pliments. In its report the commission recognizes that, during the 300 years which have elapsed since Pigafetta and others described tlie islanders as -painted savages, addicted to cannibalism cannibal-ism and other low practices, they have been so raised in the social scale that now they are ripe for self-government ( and representative institutions. One can be just to the work of the friars without going to the length of this eulogy. The truth lies somewhere between be-tween the extremes. "As you travel in the Philippines and come to a village or a hamlet that is better built than most, if you ask by whom it was founded the natives will answer that it was built by the Fran-siscans Fran-siscans or by Austin fathers. In your walks in the interior or along the coast, if you ask who built the great church that crowns the hill, the bridge of massive masonry that span3 the river, who ballasted the road that is never washed out during the rains, or who designed the irrigation works that make the plantations possible, the invariable answer is, not Colonel A. or General G. or Don Fulano the layman, but Father A. or Father B., "Amay sa culog." ("the father of souls"). Perhaps, Per-haps, in you travels, you may come to a village or a district where nearly every man, woman and child can speak Spanish with fluency, and not a few read and write it. If you have seen the Dutch in Java, and Cochin China under the French, you will be much astonished as this fact, unparalleled in the history of those Asiatic countries, which, according to the expression of , M. Leroy Beaulieu, are in process of ; " renovation by the colonizing powers of Europe. Much that is contradictory and confusing has been said on the question of language in the islands. I shall here merely register my personal per-sonal experience. I never enterd a vil-lag vil-lag in any of the Islands, including ravage Samar, where I did not . find several of the head men speaking Spanish, Span-ish, and in many instances good Spanish. Span-ish. I also found that the fluency and popularity of Spanish was always in direct proportion to the influeni-e and number of the friar's in the district. ; It was poor policy to tah the Tagals ' Spanish, but the fact that they did so to a very remarkable extent proves that the influence of the clerical teachers teach-ers was an uplifting one." (To Be Continued.) |