Religion, opium of the masses?

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“THE government knows that it has need of us, that it could not get on a day without us. Therefore it leaves us in peace, and places no impediments in our path…” An Augustinian friar said that to Karl von Scherzer, an Austrian who spent 10 days of June in the Philippines; he uttered those words, tinted with dazzling shades of hubris in 1858. Scherzer visited monasteries in Manila and environs; his guide was an Augustinian.

Another traveller, the Austrian Baron von Hugel, wrote in his travel diary that a friar in Manila asserted that the Philippine Islands belong to the Augustinian monks. The Governor-General in Manila may talk big he said but “in the interior, we are the true masters. Tell me where you want to go and everything shall be laid open for you! Police in the interior? It is laughable to hear of such an idea! As if such were possible! And I should be glad to make the acquaintance of that official who would venture to ask even the simple question of who any man is, who is under the protection of our order! Should you like to ascend the Majayjay, the highest hill in the interior, an Agustinian friar shall accompany you. Should you care to make an excursion to the lagoons and then proceed to the Pacific Ocean, an Augustinian friar shall be your guide.”

Mr. Scherzer must have been so amazed because he was informed that there were only 145 Augustinians but they lorded it over 14 provinces (there were less than 30 in those days) and 153 villages where 1,615,051 souls resided. He concluded: “Whensoever the monks lift the finger, Spain has ceased to rule in the Philippines. The spiritual reins have ever bridled the secular authority and such a state of things is the severest impediment to the development of the country and its intellectual growth.” However, he did concede that among the monastic orders in Manila, the Augustinians were by far “the best educated.” I doubt if the Jesuits would have agreed.

A year later, 1859, an eminent Englishman, Sir John Bowring, visited the Philippines to study the possibilities of developing trade relations with this Spanish colony. In his book, A Visit to the Philippine Islands, he said, “The ecclesiastical records of the Philippines overflow with evidences of the bitter and sometime bloody, controversies of the Church with the civil authority, and with quarrels of the religious bodies among themselves.” He observed that civilian authority like the gobernadorcillo never fail to consult the friar of his parish about the implementation of mandates issued by higher authorities. Sir John Bowring was of the opinion that the influence of the friars was “greatly due to the heroism, labors, sufferings, and sacrifices of the early missionaries and to the admirably organized hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church whose ramifications reach to the extremest points….”

However, decades before Scherzer and Bowring reached our shores, the general manager of the Compañia Real de Filipinas, Tomas Comyn, wrote that, “…The missionaries were the real conquerors of the Philippines; their weapons were not those of the warrior, but they gave laws to millions and, scattered though they were, they established by unity of purpose and action of permanent empire over immense multitudes of men.”

Who was it that said that religion is the opium of the masses? (ggc1898@gmail.com)