CHURCH AND STATE IN THE PHILIPPINES.
A PROCLAMATION of the civil government's views through Judge Taft, the head of the commission appointed for the government of the islands, has been given to the public. It came about on this wise: A municipal council of Filipinos had interfered with the rights of a Catholic priest. Governor Taft's decision was in favor of the priest. Here is a part of his proclamation as given by Homer C. Stuntz, D.D., in the Christian Advocate of February 6:— OFFICE OF THE CIVIL COMMISSION, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, MANILA, P. I. July 31, 1901. CAPTAIN WALLIS O. CLARK, GOVERNOR OF TARLAC, TARLAC, P. I.—SIR: On July 24 I received a call from Father Eusebio Natividad, a Filipino Roman Catholic priest in the town of Tarlac. He came to complain against the municipal council of the town, that the town was attempting by ordinance or resolution to regulate the fees which he was charging for religious functions performed by him as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in the church at Tarlac. Similar complaints have come to me from other parts of the archipelago, and I deem it wise, therefore, in a public letter to the governor of the province where there has been such an abuse of civil authority, to call attention to it, and to point out the fundamental error committed by the municipal council. The President of the United States in his instructions to the commission used the following words: “Upon every division and branch of the government for the Philippines, therefore, must be imposed these inviolable rules: that no law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting a free exercise thereof, and that the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship without discrimination or preference shall forever be allowed.” And again: “That no form of religion and no minister of religion shall be forced upon any community or upon any citizen of the islands; that upon the other hand no minister of religion shall be interfered with or molested in following his calling; and that the separation between State and Church shall be real, entire, and absolute.” 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 marriage ceremony or the funeral 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 the civil government, but must apply for relief to the superior ecclesiastical authority in the Catholic Church. Under the government instituted here by the United States, neither priest nor bishop has any power, as such, to control the course of the civil authorities, nor can he, as such, take any part in the government, nor exert any influence upon its course. He may only appeal to the civil authorities, as any other citizen or resident may appeal, for protection to his life, liberty, or property, or that of the religious corporation which he represents. With the entire separation of ecclesiastical influence from civil government must follow, on the other hand, complete abstinence from interference in clerical and ecclesiastical matters by civil officers, as such. The right of each councilor, as an individual, if he be a member of the Catholic Church, to take such action within the church as its rules and discipline may prescribe, to prevent the exaction of excessive fees by priests, is, of course, fully conceded;9but when the councilors meet in a town council, and take official action by municipal ordinance or resolution, they are not acting as individual members of the Catholic Church; they are acting as the agents of civil government, and, as such, they have nothing whatever to do with the government of the church, or with any act of its priest which concerns the administering of religious sacraments or the performance of religious functions, unless those services are carried on and those functions are performed in such a way as to affect injuriously the property rights or the civil rights of the general public, whether Catholic or non-Catholic. Now, certainly, that is just and reasonable. But the following translation from a tract issued “in Spanish and the vernaculars, gotten out by the ‘Catholic Center,’ as nearly the name of the organization that stands for preserving ‘Holy Church’ as can be put into English,” shows just how Catholics look upon religious liberty and equality:— To the Conflict, Filipino Catholics!
Not many days since a miserable paper, rabidly impious, 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 a 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 within our power. Yes! War against God is the infamous motto of this infernal proclamation. They say that they “can not and do not 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. And all under the guise of a pernicious liberty! Buffoons! Pusillanimous and false politicians! You desire to eclipse the sun of the moral world, which is the Catholic faith. We shall walk in darkness. The Philippines will be a Babylon. Enough of hypocrisies. Enough has our country been deceived. Enough tears and blood have we shed. Shake off the lethargy that overpowers you. Turn your gaze upon your unfortunate country, and have compassion upon it. Will you impassively allow the treasury of your faith to be torn from you by violence? Will you consent that it disappear from the Philippines, because it so pleases four rickety brawlers? The Centro Catholico protests in your name against the low, miserable paper and its reprobate propositions, desiring that this solemn protest be heard the circumference of this archipelago around as a genuine expression of your Christian sentiments. We despise the talkative pygmies. To-day impiety reigns, and it is a time of ruin, of fury, of indignation. Be zealous, therefore, for the law to-day, and give your lives in defense of your parents. Be resolved by the valor of your ancestors, and you shall acquire imperishable fame and eternal renown. These things speak for themselves. The conflict between liberty and tyranny is beginning anew.