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Show The Philippine Question. rpHE WESTERN WATCHMAN, J after publishing a set of resolutions resolu-tions sent from the diocese of Leavenworth, gives" the editor's comments com-ments in a bold, breezy and forcible manner. He does not palliate what he considers wrong, policy, nor does he attempt at-tempt to exculpate the friars wherein they are to blame. He gives strong reasons why the growling of Catholics Catho-lics should, in many instances, cease, as they are simply the effect of chronic grumblers, who are more , Catholic in their vaporings than the church itself. We give the criticism in the editor's inimitable style: "This is a subject that we have studiously refrained from touching, believing be-lieving that its solution is in good hands, and any outside officious inter- I ference would only complicate matters and retard a settlement. These resolutions, reso-lutions, coming from Catholic lay conventions con-ventions and Catholic bodies, lay and clerical, mean very little. The men who vote for the resolutions, as a rule, know little or nothing of what they are determining. . It little becomes priests and sensible laymen to charge this administration ad-ministration with a purpose to Protestantize Protest-antize the Filipinos. It is false and slanderous. It is true that nearly all the teachers appointed by, the Taft commission in the Philippines are Protestants. But why is this so? The government asked for volunteers to teach in the schools. What Catholic offered himself? What bishop interested inter-ested himself in the matter? Archbishop Arch-bishop Kain is the only one of all the members of the hierarchy who took the trouble to provide teachers for the government schools in the Philippines; Philip-pines; and we fear His Grace of St. Louis was too late to accomplish all the good he intended. On the other hand, the missionary societies had carloads car-loads of men and w omen ready to take the first steamer for Manila. They got there first, and were appointed. What ; policy of the government was manifest here? We allowed the preachers to get ahead of us, and w e sat down and be- I gan passing resolutions and grumbling. Let us be on the alert, and after a while we shall come to our own-Then, own-Then, as to the friars. Leave that to Rome. We have defended those good men from every attack upon their character. We have spoken in their defense words that blistered their tra-ducers. tra-ducers. But there is one charge brought against them that we believe to be true. They have been in politics poli-tics over there. Now, a priest in politics poli-tics is bad enough.; but a monk in politics is an abomination. The government gov-ernment objects to the friars as poli-" ticians; not as priests. This country cannot banish the friars or confiscate their lands. The thing is absurd. Congress Con-gress could not dispossess the orders of a perch of land in the Philippines, except for public uses, and then for a consideration. But the government thinks the work of Americanizing the archipelago would be vastly advanced by a change in the personnel of the clergy; and it asks the Pope to use his kind offices to that end. The matter is now under discussion at the Vatican, and anything resolved at Atchison or elsewhere is so much virtuous indignation indig-nation wasted. |