The Dichotomous Legacy of the Catholic Church’s Opposition to the Philippine Revolution of 1896

ABSTRACT

This article examines the repositioning of the Catholic Church in the aftermath of the Philippine Revolution of 1896–98, during the transfer of Spanish to American colonial rule. It reviews the consultations between the outgoing Spanish bishops and the Vatican’s Apostolic Delegate, Placido Chapelle, in January 1900, and the subsequent religious settlement promulgated in the Vatican’s Apostolic Constitution for the Philippine Church, Quae mari Sinico, in 1902. The Delegate’s identification with the Spanish bishops and their opposition to Filipino nationalist aspirations and the Filipino secular clergy confirmed the anti-Filipino position of the Church in the American colonial period. Both the Filipino bishops and the American bishops opposed independence and distrusted the nationalist leaders as anti-clerical Masons. This is followed by a discussion of the claimed reconciliation of Church and Filipino political aspirations in the post-Vatican II period in the 1960s, which culminated in the Church’s role in bringing down President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Committed to a theology of social justice, the bishops now aligned the Church with progressive democratic nationalists. In its successful opposition to the Marcos dictatorship in the name of “People’s Power,” the hierarchy claimed that through the “Miracle of EDSA” the Church had identified with and indeed represented the political will of the Filipino people.

KEYWORDS:

• Catholic Church
• Philippine Revolution

Disclosure Statement

The author reported no conflict of interest.

Notes

1. See Phelan, Hispanization of the Philippines.

2. This article draws for its first part on my PhD dissertation, “Church and Revolution in the Philippines.”

3. See Schumacher, Church and State, 2.

4. Schumacher, Revolutionary Clergy, 36–47.

5. Ibid., 24.

6. Ibid.

7. Chapelle died in New Orleans in August 1905 during a yellow fever epidemic. Tschan, Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 4, 11–12; and see Schumacher, Revolutionary Clergy, 194.

8. Bell, “Instructions to All Station Commanders,” 1610.

9. Schumacher, Revolutionary Clergy, 95.

10. Clifford, “Aglipayanism as a Political Movement,” 280. Manila Times, 29 December 1899 and 13 January 1990.

11. Manila Times, 24 October 1899.

12. New York Times, 27 September 1899.

13. Evangelista, “Religious Problems in the Philippines,” 250.

14. See Vidler, Variety of Catholic Modernists; Ranchetti, Catholic Modernists; McAvoy, The Great Crisis.

15. Ruiz, Three Pillars, 1–6.

16. Achútegui and Bernad, Religious Coup d’état, vol. 3, 60–61.

17. Foreman, The Philippine Islands, 365.

18. Falconi, Popes in the Twentieth Century, 8.

19. Quae mari sinico, Introduction.

20. “Defends the Luzon Friars”, New York Times, 24 October 1899.

21. Ibid.

22. Pardo de Tavera, Reseña histórica, 18.

23. Clifford, “Aglipayanism as a Political Movement,” 281.

24. Le Roy, Philippine Life, 131.

25. Philippine Commission, 1901, 31.

26. Schumacher, Revolutionary Clergy, 195.

27. Achútegui and Bernad, Religious Coup d’état, 60–61.

28. Taylor, Philippine Insurrection, vol.1, 467:13, 1971.

29. Ibid.

30. Schumacher, Revolutionary Clergy, 195.

31. Taylor, Philippine Insurrection, vol. 1, 122:11, 1971.

32. Schumacher, Growth and Decline, 247.

33. Achútegui and Bernad, Religious Coup d’état, 112–77.

34. Letters of Apolinario Mabini, 215–16.

35. The original handwritten minutes of the consultations and a typewritten copy are held in the Santo Domingo Archives, the University of Santo Tomás, Manila, under the title Acta Collationum, quas Episcopi Philippinarum haberunt in Civitate de Manila praeside Rdmo. D. Delegado P. L. Chapelle, Manila, January 1900, vol. 10 of Historia Eclesiastica de Filipinas. Subsequent to my use of them they were consulted by Fr John Schumacher and analysed in his Revolutionary Clergy and then published in Philippiniana Sacra 9 (1974): 308–51.

36. Le Roy, Philippine Life, ii, 297–98; New York Times, 18 January 1900.

37. In their private history of the period, the Dominican Order included a brief report of the consultations, Recoder, V, 222–23. This report was used by Father Pablo Fernandez OP, archivist at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, in an unpublished article made available to the author.

38. Quoted in Robertson, “The Aglipayan Schism,” 331.

39. Rodriguez, Gregorio Aglipay, vol. 1, 230–31, 310–11.

40. New York Times, 18 January 1900; Libertas and El Comercio, 8–12 January 1900.

41. Blount, “Religious Conditions in the Philippine Islands,” 88.

42. Achútegui and Bernad, Religious Revolution in the Philippines, vol. 1, 157; Taylor, Philippine Insurrection, vol. 1, Exhibit 8.

43. Achútegui and Bernad, vol. 1, 156–17.

44. Rodriguez, Gregorio Aglipay, vol. 1, 333.

45. Acta Collationum, minutes, 8 January 1900.

46. Ibid.

47. Philippine Commission, 96–111.

48. Ibid., Testimony of Very Rev. Francisco Araya, 2 August 1900, 8.

49. Acta Collationum, January 1900.

50. Alcocer, Pastoral Letter.

51. Schumacher, Church and State, 53.

52. Archbishop Harty, 1912, quoted in Schumacher, Church and State, 49.

53. Schumacher, Church and State, 53.

54. Ibid., 64.

55. Shoesmith, “Church and Martial Law,” 70-89. For a review of Catholic social and political thinking from the social encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII to Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council, see Shoesmith, “Church and Martial Law,” 246–57.

56. Schumacher, Growth and Decline, 247.

57. UST Social Research Center, Philippine Revolution, 1.

58. Papal Speeches, 1981, 4.

59. Youngblood, Marcos Against the Church, 65ff.

60. Youngblood, “The Corazon Aquino ‘Miracle’,” 1241.

61. Bernad, The February Revolution, 133–34.

62. Bautista, Cardinal Sin, 188.

Additional information

Funding

The research was not supported by external funding.

Notes on contributors

Dennis Shoesmith

Dennis Shoesmith is University Professorial Fellow of Charles Darwin University, Australia. His research interests include comparative politics of Southeast Asia, Philippine church history, political developments in East Timor and, most recently, issues of decentralised governance in eastern Indonesia. He was attached to the UN Administration in east Timor in 2000–2001, and has since been a consultant for the East Timorese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, US-Aid, and the Australian department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.