Church and revolution in the Philippines : a study of religious conflict within the Philippines, 1896-1904, with particular reference to Luzon

Abstract

The Philippine revolution of 1896 was the critical moment for the emergence of an authentically Filipino national community. The revolution was significant as an inner struggle to overcome internal social and cultural divisions between elite and masses as much as a political struggle to gain independence from Spain. The leaders of the 1896 revolution articulated the aspirations and values of and were comprehensible within an indigenous religious tradition which had manifested itself in earlier millenarian movements and peasant revolts. This tradition drew on apocalyptic and liminal Christian ideas as well as older, pre-Hispanic beliefs and perceptions of the world, and posited a radical tension between the everyday world of appearances and an ideal world or 'new Eden' of perfect community, brotherhood, and direct union with God. This new world could only be achieved through suffering, inner purification and fraternal love. By the end of 1898 a very different leadership assumed control of the revolution and its official ideology shifted to a position explicitly hostile to the radical folk tradition. The new leadership of Hispanicised nationalist ilustrados drew its inspiration from the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution via Spanish Liberalism. The subsequent confrontation between these two kinds of revolutionaries exposed the contradictions of a society formed during three centuries of colonialism and divided between two classes and two cultures. The cooption of the ilustrado elite after 1898 by the incoming American administration confirmed this internal confrontation between elite and masses. The clearest evidence of the kind of divisions within Philippine society before, during, and after the revolution can be found in the religious disputes which were a constant preoccupation of Spaniards, Filipinos and, later, Americans. Given the nature of Spanish colonisation and the pervasive influence of the institutional church both as the key instrument of colonial rule and the vehicle for acculturation, religious issues were central to the revolutionary struggle. The battles fought within the church between Spanish regular clergy and Filipino secular clergy, between Spanish friar landlords and Filipino tenants, between Spanish priest-administrators and the local Filipino principalias helped provoke the revolution and expressed the broader struggle of various groups to control the colony and to shape its institutions and values in their own image. Even more profoundly, the confrontation between groups holding quite incompatible views of man, God, and society brought into question the fundamental assumptions of Philippine society. The three-sided struggle between Spanish clergy, ilustrado liberal nationalists, and folk revolutionaries - a struggle which became four sided with American intervention - was concerned with what definition of man and society would prevail in the Philippines. To understand the nature of this struggle and to suggest reasons for the failure of the revolution to overcome the cultural dualism of the colonial Philippines, this study traces the religious controversies which preceded and followed the revolution. It begins with an analysis of the colonial church and the process by which Spanish Roman Catholic ideas and values were adapted and transformed within an indigenous tradition. The world-view of the Spanish friars is then examined and their opposition to reform is placed in its historical, theological, and international context The Filipino clergy formed an ambiguous and symbolically critical group in a colony founded and administered as a mission and their long struggle to gain recognition inspired both the secular nationalist and the folk radical movements of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Their importance during the revolution is analysed in Chapter Three. With the collapse of Spanish rule and the transfer of sovereignty to the United States the terms of the religious struggle were radically altered. In this new situation, the various groups competing for control of the church and of the colony looked to the Vatican to solve the problems of a racially divided clergy, the friar estates, and the question of religious authority itself. The debate over the proper function of the Filipino clergy continued as a bitterly divisive issue after 1899 as did the apparent determination of the religious orders to regain control of their extensive properties and the parishes they had held before the revolution. Contrary to accepted views of the religious settlement worked out under the Americans, these problems were not solved. The Apostolic Delegate sent to the Philippines by the Holy See in early 1900 immediately allied himself with the Spanish hierarchy and endorsed its absolute opposition to religious change in the islands. The failure of the Delegat and of Rome to recognise the needs of the Philippine Church meant that religious controversies which had so deeply divided the colony under Spair were perpetuated under American rule. The Vatican solution, as contained in the Apostolic Constitution, Quae mari Sinico, of 1902, provoked widespread anger and broadened a schism which had broken out among a section of the Filipino clergy and laity some months earlier. The Iqlesia Filipina Independiente, the independent national church which emerged from the schism of 1902, contained within itself all the contradictions evident in Philippine society. The opposed class interests and incompatible 'cosmologies' of its leaders, clergy, and mass following, reflected the dilemmas confronting the colony. The ambivalence of the IFI leadership towards the religious traditions of its followers, towards the revolution, and towards American rule and independence were the first substantial indications of the consequences of the failure of the revolution to establish a Filipino cultural identity, a core of fundamental, shared values and beliefs relevant to the historical experience and the inherited traditions of the Filipino people.