As little is this first argument overcome by [the assertion] that the civil law provides that the regular who is a parish priest is immediately subject, in what pertains to that office, to the visitation and correction of the ordinary. For, laying aside the fact that such a law can be abrogated by the supreme pontiff--as actually was done by Pius V after the holy Council of Trent, and afterward confirmed by Urban VIII; and this very procedure is supported by various declarations of the most eminent cardinals--when there is a lack of secular priests (as is the case in Filipinas, where for eight hundred parishes, the approximate number of those in existence, there are hardly sixty seculars in number, and still fewer who have abilities for giving instruction and learning languages): laying all this aside, the religious assert that the civil law which commands such subjection must be understood in the case that the religious who are administering curacies, without being subordinate to the ordinary, desire to continue thus, being parish priests; but it does not order that they be compelled by violence and force to enter that relation. And if a secular cleric, to whom with canonical and rigorous institution is given a perpetual curacy, can, notwithstanding this, renounce such curacy, nor on that account be disqualified by the law as long as he lives in immediate subjection to one superior only, who is his bishop: how or for what reason can the reverend archbishop of Manila claim that the religious cannot peaceably make the same renunciation, in order to avoid the risk of having so many superiors? As the religious hold the Indian villages not as proprietaries, but removable ad nutum, other persons could, for no better reason than their own wishes, deprive the religious of those ministries, even though the latter live therein with the sanctity of their holy founders; and is it possible that, when only the will of another person is sufficient to prevent them from being curas, the divine inspiration and their own self-reproach will not be sufficient for them?