T. H. Pardo de Tavera

“ We shall sow principles of morality as the farmer who sows in the fields the seeds properly selected which will not grow unless the soil is adequate. Sane morals is founded upon the basis of reason; when this foundation is lacking, the moral taught will be like a tree that is rootless and lifeless. It is not possible that a school without god (escuela sin Dios) or the one with god can make the seed of morals grow upon a soil prepared by the school of superstition, of magic, and of sorcery. We have to prepare the soil cultivating reason and creating the logical sense. ”

“ None like those who are dedicated to instruction have such an interest in knowing the mentality of the society in which they live and which it is their duty to educate. An exact knowledge of the moral, intellectual, and physical defects of a people is the most important factor to orient its education, and it would be absurd to close one's eyes to what is bad, because the principle of correcting a certain thing is to know if it is a mistake or not. ”

“ There is only the instinctive tendency; there is no rational control in opposition. What mastery over self does a man have who for the purpose of controlling his habit of dirty and obscene speech seeks the intervention of a saint? Lacking in will, dispossessed of any idea of struggle with himself, how can he triumph over himself? Slave to his own passions it might have seemed that the only thing that might control him was the punishment in store in future life ”

“ Not only is the devil deemed among the enemies of the soul, together with our body and the entire humanity, but at every moment we tremble at his snares, we consider ourselves weak to resist him and even at times seemingly fearing that the self same God will not know how to defend Himself from the devil because at every step it is sought to awaken God and place him as a sort of guard against this infernal power. ”

“ Nothing can be imagined that is more immoral, more primitive, more contemptible. The celestial court turns out to be a court more corrupt than those of the autocrats condemned by history: the court of the Khans, the Sultans, the Bysantine Emperors, Mungols, Persians, Tartars, all the barbarians who have abused humanity and who have personified injustice and justified revolution and massacres. ”

“ In other words, it is not immorality which is growing. Rather, it is the moral consciousness which is gaining ground in individual consciences, thus forming a public opinion which formerly did not exist, completely awake to existing social evils and which are combatted. Not that social morals has been decadent. On the contrary, a moral consciousness has been rapidly formed in our society, a consciousness which formerly was found only among an inconsiderable minority, and which resulted in the new movement against vice and immorality. ”

“ As a first step, after you have let the parents see the social evils which result from a Godless school, such as crime against purity, murder, suicide, rapine and robbery, disobedience against civil and ecclesiastical authorities, in short, the corruption of customs, all the seasoned fruit of those lay schools, your reverences should influence them to declare, in writing or communications which they should address to us, to the government without euphemisms their irrevocable and decided will that Christian education be given them in the schools. ”

“ I am not interested in, nor do I discuss, the religious point of view, but the importance of superstition in social life, its pernicious influence upon the evolution of morality. What undoubtedly results from the narratives contained in that literature which constituted the only reading of the people is the promotion of ignorance spreading in a very effective manner all the superstitions aforementioned and adding to them a wealth of errors which unfortunately governs the mentality of the mass of the people. ”

“ With what has been said there is enough to explain the origin of the immorality, the real cause of the predisposition to vice, the absence of a sense of responsibility, the natural explanation of what incomprehensible character formed of a mixture of sentiments which the missionaries have contributed to the Filipino, Indio, Spaniard, and Chinese, all influenced by the injurious spirit which pervades all that literature which is completely antagonical to reason. Such, and not the lay education, is responsible for this evil. ”

“ Those who in a great measure are guilty to their nation for the misfortunes that befell the Filipino people that resorted to revolution and rebellion to free themselves from a régime opposed to their progress and happiness, forgetting their incapacity to fulfill the obligations which, in the name of their country, they assumed here and which were the causes of the political failure of the past colonization, they to-day wish to defend their interests in our country pursuing their policy which would only produce dissension among the Filipinos. ”

“ Favor, propitiation, exception, protection, grace, preference, predilection, are incompatible with what a God should be, with the Ideal of civilization, with the supreme aspiration of humanity which is Justice. ”

“ Now that our individual education has enabled us to understand what hygiene is and its importance has been demonstrated, we have not only improved our sanitary condition but a collective sentiment equal to the sum total of the individual sentiments has been formed, and a public opinion in favor of hygiene has been established. ”

“ The invocation “Jesús, María y José” working as a magic formula saved that man who had no more merit than his ability to mention the names of the “trinity on earth.” In the same novena there is a consideration of this most marvelous favor, and that is, that in order to obtain some reform in our lives in view of the favor conceded by Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to their devotee, tho he be a confirmed sinner, it was only necessary to imitate an invocation so frequently repeated in all his days of malice, the words “Jesús, María y José” (p. 10) . ”

“ Since this opinion grows more rapidly than sanitation itself in Manila, we see that every once in a while the Bureau of Health is censured to the point of attributing to its fault the increase of anti-hygienic conditions, when in reality what increases is the clamor for hygiene by virtue of the increase of the individuals who understand hygiene and demand strict application of its laws and principles. ”

“ Those individuals are in truth the natural products of that superstition preached, diffused, and presented to the ignorance of people who have come to the point of fearing neither God nor devil and who know that the infernal punishment only is meted to him who does not wear a rosary around his neck or does not confide in a pintakasi, who guarantees eternal salvation because God does not permit that the worshiper of one of His devotees be condemned.
What kind of citizen can an individual be in society who laughs at punishment using the easy means of a celestial [39] lawyer. ”

“ The Filipinos, as a general rule, have good memory but without great talent; they have no good talent.
Almost all education in the Philippines was given by the religious orders, that is to say, the secondary and university instruction was maintained by the religious orders, and primary instruction by the curates of the towns.
Among the Filipinos all is imitation. They lack originality. They were taught how to read and write Spanish but the majority of them learned it in a purely mechanical manner. ”

“ Devoted to their inherited traditions and customs and lacking in adequate opportunities to acquire proper knowledge, the mass of the people have to adhere as it is logical and natural, to their beliefs, which by their not requiring any effort to understand are imbedded and deeply rooted in a spontaneous manner in their minds. As it is shown in our annals of the judiciary, superstition occupies a notable place among the factors of criminality in this country. ”

“ The prelate does not enjoin violence; but at such times as these, violence naturally results from an adequate preparation of the popular conscience; and when a people believes that the Government, the educator no less, is the cause of the thieves, the murderers, the corruptors, a people is truly dead who does not seek to wipe out by any means such a government, especially if it is foreign, which corrupts its citizens. ”

“ Logical mentality cannot be developed when the absurd is fomented and cultivated, especially when it is presented under the false veneer of religion, when it is founded on a purely puerile and simple superstition.
In the life of Saint Vicente Ferrer, according to his novenas, the following miracles are referred to, and there is no doubt that he who believes in them cannot really cultivate the faculties of his intelligence. ”

“ The prelate who accused the public schools in the form above mentioned has committed a lamentable error. For [36] my part, I can say that the accusations awakened in me a desire to investigate the causes of immorality and of the perversion of customs which the said prelate, and we with him, all regret. According to those who have studied the mentality of the majority of our people, it is evident that superstition is the enemy which we all have to combat and that is the cause of many of the moral errors which we observe. ”

“ They take advantage of the current of public opinion in favor of public morals, to make it appear that the democratic form of the Government, the English language, the lay schools, coeducation, and Anglo-Saxon civilization are the causes of the supposed growth of immorality: Such is the program of certain people! ”

“ The lay education is wholly democratic and will not be capable of committing the same faults of those who, by not following their education, seek to employ in the affairs of life those means recommended in the Novenas in order to obtain what is desired by means of the help of the powerful, secured by means of requests, protestations of love, and promise of eternal devotion. ”

“ Nor have I thought for a moment of mixing religion in my criticism; nor is it in my power to vary the results or consequences that may result from the facts mentioned in the Novenas, which are the literature responsible for this state of puerile mentality, absolutely inadequate for an understanding of morals, composed of matter that paralyzes, rather than bring out, progress.
Morals is nothing but the triumph over one's self, thru which man does what he should and not what he wishes. In the immoral man there is no struggle between two tendencies, one against evil and the other against good. ”

“ It is a ridiculous and even absurd superstition, it is true, but it is a tragic and dangerous because it offers to the wicked, the criminal, the imbecile, the means of triumphing in life, of obtaining what they want, giving them the means of avoiding punishment, making fun here on earth of the justice of men, and securing from God the pardon from eternal condemnation thru the simple means of invoking the name of a saint, or thru the medium of a Latin word which, acting as a sort of open sesame opens wide to the devotee the gates of heaven. ”

“ Those who believe in the absurd miracle (milagrería absurda) , protector of the fools, accomplice of the lazy, of the gamblers, of thieves, of all who, thru its means, seek to secure what they desire—those are the criminals that fill our jails and who die in the gallows; those are the ones, who, armed with their anting-anting, talisman, rosary, scapulary, bones of saints, or shark's teeth, fight with the police, commit outrages, upset order, confident in their triumph because of the protection of their celestial pintakasi. ”

“ There is no doubt that even under the Spanish régime we already knew of the existence in the Philippines of criminals condemned to death and imprisonment for murder, theft, rape, sacrilege, and all kinds of crimes, and that the corruption of customs was neither unknown nor rare. ”

“ The regular friars as well as the secular clergy confess that the mass of the people still finds itself subject to the superstition inherited from our predecessors—the superstition which could be called genuinely Philippine, that which comes from the old belief in the nunu, in the asuang, the anito and all the spirits of the old idolatry preached before the implantation of Catholicism by the Spanish missionaries. ”

“ The fulfillment of duty shall be its objective and in order to obtain this goal, it is highly necessary to develop the will in man with which he shall fight the animal instincts, the sentimental impulses, all that is contrary to the dictates of reason. ”

“ The blind fear of Saint Thomas led him to conceive a blind justice of the divinity, because of his sins God released the tempests and gave lightning which naturally hurt and molested a great number of persons who suffered by reason of the sins of the saint. To the simple believer, when the wise saint thought and believed in that manner, there was no reason for rejecting the explanation, much less to suspect that to punish justly the sinners was not an act of justice nor of common sense. ”

“ The Novena to the Virgin of the Rosary begins with an enumeration of the Fifteen Promises of the Virgin to the devotees of the Rosary. In the first she promises to grant whatever special grace is asked of her. He who prays the rosary will be converted if he is a sinner, and in any event will be admitted to life eternal. “All that is asked of her will be secured quickly” (p. 4) .
The list of miracles performed by the image of the Virgin of the Rosary is endless and occupies all the pages from 37 to 90 of the Novena. ”

“ When the missionaries preached their religion, they condemned the old Pagan superstitions but they taught new superstitions more powerful than the original, not only because of the prestige of the new patrons who are all members of a Celestial Court organized as an earthly aristocracy and headed by the same God, Creator of the Universe, but by communicating with God in the same tongue, which the ordinary man supposed was spoken by Him, which is the Latin tongue, in which the priests said their prayers and sang their hymns. ”