The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 36, 1649-1666: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century.
History
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 36, 1649-1666: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century.
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
In the first place the religious's definitorio may assign him also to
a house with a vote, all of which have ministries in the Filipinas;
and an ambitious man may by the exercise of skill, and by influence,
intercessions, and presents deprive him of the place, and perhaps
may impute to him faults and defects that he does not possess in
order to attain his purpose better and to justify his action. That
can not fail to be a cause for sorrow, and more so to one who has
no foundation in the islands, but who is rather disgusted at being
there; and it will be a sufficient cause for him to retire from his
ministries and even to attempt to return to España.
And even though the superiors may order the religious to live in
their missions with that subjection, it may be that they cannot
obtain it by entreaty from them, and that the religious will excuse
themselves by saying with St. Paul: Unusquisque enim in ea vocatione
qua vocatus est permanet. [61] They may also say that they wish to
persevere in the vocation to which they were called by God, and that
they did not enter religion to recognize two superiors, one a regular
and the other a secular, but rather one of their own profession--by
whom they would willingly allow themselves to be visited, censured,
and punished; but not by two distinct in profession. For if there
are two superiors who are unequal in profession, it is quite possible
that they will be at variance in the matters of orders and obedience;
and that such subordinate may be in doubt without the power to help
it lest obedience to one be an offense to the other. Consequently,
placed between two extremes, he will come to obey the more powerful
and to disobey his regular superior, who is the one from whom he can
fear less.
And one might doubt whether the superior could impose on those
who should be thus firm in their purpose the precept of obedience,
so that they should subject themselves as curas to an ordinary and
to tho choice of a governor. And if for the above reasons those who
are zealous for their rules should be lacking in the provinces and
ministries, the men who are less religious would become the mainstay
of the provinces and would administer the missions--men whom neither
ambition nor their slight attachment to the observance calls away [from
the order]. Consequently, such men coming in time to rule the provinces
and to possess the ministries in those islands, the end will be that
there will be no religion, observance, or examples in them to invite
the Indians, but only scandals by which they will stumble; for, as a
foolish people, they embrace what they see rather than what they hear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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