Prior to the supervision by the Paulist fathers, the studies of secondary instruction, which were given in the conciliar seminaries, were identical with those given by the friars in their other educational institutions, in substance as well as in form, as the purposes were the same--that is, to give education to Filipino clerics, [114] whom they always considered their rivals and political enemies.... For this reason the instruction given to the Filipinos, who aspired to a sacerdotal career, was incomplete, being reduced exclusively to rudiments, if they can be so called, of logic, psychology, ethics, metaphysics, and dogmatic and moral theology. In so far as political and social studies were concerned, absolutely nothing was given, and clerics were even forbidden to acquire knowledge of this character. Social education was unknown in these seminaries; no consideration was given to the fact that clerics, on account of their obligations and the constant intercourse they are obliged to have with their parishioners, should be the best educated men, with great knowledge of the ways of the world and of the human heart. The moral education of the Filipino people, especially that of the women, often retrogressed, and made absolutely no progress on account of the influence caused by the status of the Filipino clerics in the popular mind. After the conciliar seminaries passed to the charge of the Paulist fathers, affairs continued in the same manner, because these priests were subject and subordinate to the rigid tutorship of the monastic orders and the universitarian feudalism which the Dominican friars exercised in the Philippine Islands, and it was not possible for them to develop their own initiative, or to explain their own opinions.... [Doctrina y reglas constitucionales de la iglesia Filipina independiente [i.e., "Doctrine and constitutional rules of the independent Filipino church"] [115] (Manila, 1904), pp. 14, 15, contains the following in regard to seminaries, which are analogous to conciliar seminaries.] The first duties of our bishops consist in establishing a good seminary in their respective dioceses, which may serve as a training-school for new priests, educated according to the new doctrines of the independent Filipino church. They shall exercise their whole care in seeking a suitable although modest locality, and in catechising as many young men as possible, who are fit for the lofty ministry of God. We desire that not only our church, but more than anyone else the most reverend bishops themselves recognize the great necessity for these seminaries. Consequently, their negligence in this particular will be very fatal, and merit censure. The effort shall be made to give the young men a complete instruction, one concise and more nutritive than that of the interminable years of unnecessary dissertations and fruitless "therefores," with which the Roman priests feed the best years of our youth.