Tension between sects

The advance Protestantism gained in its first 13 years in Davao created animosity with the Catholic preachers in Davao. From being without rival before the Americans took over, the new wave of evangelists, more aggressive and superior in number, did not lose time in braving the interiors and establish their presence in tribal territories.

This unwanted development, happening decades before the concept of ecumenism was introduced in the Second Vatican Council, provoked tension. In two instances, the Jesuits of San Pedro Church had to exploit their connections with the local administrators.

In the first case, the priests were able to convince the district administrator that street preaching should be banned. In another incident, which reached the court, the parish priest got judicial favor when the judge ruled that the dead body of a person who died in a Protestant hospital but was anointed with the sacrament of Extreme Unction should be given a Catholic burial.

Alternately, the Protestant preachers were either called heretics or adversaries.

In his Dec. 15, 1915, letter to Fr. Miguel Saderra, SJ, Jesuit priest Fr. Raimundo Peruga labelled the Protestant preachers as “more fearsome,” calling “their diabolical end” successful with the setting up of “a heretical hospital and a chapel of the same ilk” identified with the Protestant sect, represented by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). Obviously, there was an air of jealousy in all these commentaries:

“Since this hospital is unique in this area, both Catholic and non-Catholic patients are forced to attend; the former to confirm their false beliefs and festive doctrines, and the latter, the Catholics, to place themselves at risk of imminent destruction… Because while the Catholic minister established here almost always encounters a thousand and one obstacles to entering this hospital and visiting the poor sick, On the contrary, the Protestant Pastor enters it at all hours with absolute freedom to preach his errors and violate the conscience of the poor sick Catholics… And the worst part is that… the heretics are making a killing by freely spreading their errors and tricks.”

Also lumped up in the heap of clerical vulnerability was the tagging of “neutral and mixed schools” as “hell,” in reference to the apprehension that these can become breeding grounds for more heresies that are contrary to the doctrine of Catholicism. Fr. Peruga subtly explains:

‘This is another mouth of Hell. Precisely so; because as mixed schools, they are the imme-diate occasion of countless sins; and as neutral schools, they are a necessary genus of the most complete ignorance of everything important for every man to know. Added to what has been said is that many of the teachers are either openly atheists and rationalists, or if some of them call themselves Catholics, they are so only in name, without any practice of Catholicism.”

To overcome the challenges brought about by Protestantism, the Davao Mission had to deal also with its own issues, especially in visiting the far-flung parishes, administering spiritual nourishment, and participating in liturgical obligations, due to the mission’s “size, large population, multitude of races or tribes, difficulties in traveling, the poverty of the mis-sionaries, persecutions, and other little things or big things.”

But travel to the remote missions, both by sea and by land, was difficult. Reaching the countryside means negotiating narrow, muddy paths, cleared and preserved only by the foot-prints of those who travel. Overall, the mission encompassed the entire territory of Davao and, measured in a straight line, its coastline extending over 50 geographic leagues.

In summary, there was an urgent need for a significant increase in the number of selected personnel; the demand for large donations to build numerous Catholic schools and to ade-quately equip their teachers; and the need for donations to build a good Catholic hospital, which would only materialize in 1948 with the arrival of the Dominican Sisters of the Trinity from Canada.