New York, United States -- Last February 17th marked the 137th anniversary of the martyrdom of three Filipino secular priests: Mariano Gomez, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora. The three were falsely implicated in the Cavite Mutiny that erupted less than a month earlier, on January 20, 1872. The immediate cause of this minor revolt with major consequences? The newly appointed Governor General Rafael De Izquierdo had withdrawn the exemption from the onerous tribute and forced labor that the workers at the Cavite arsenal, the artillery barracks, and engineer corps of Fort San Felipe -- just across Manila Bay from Intramuros -- had enjoyed since 1740. Longstanding features of Spanish colonial rule, the tribute and forced labor obliged able-bodied men to pay a fixed amount and to work on public projects for a certain period every year. The abolition of these privileges caused the men to mutiny.

Izquierdo had just taken over the previous year from Carlos Maria De la Torre, a liberal, who had lifted restrictions on the press, public demonstrations, and the formation of associations aimed at reform. De la Torre displayed his intentions for a relatively open dispensation by going on walks in Intramuros sans the traditional escort in their fancy uniforms. Not surprisingly this scandalized the long-time Spanish expatriates and friars, who feared this display of liberalism would encourage the lowly indios to become uppity and entertain ideas of a free society. Naturally the rising bourgeoisie -- native and mestizo alike -- hailed him. Upon succeeding De la Torre, the right-winger Rafael De Izquierdo promptly restored the restrictions, and viewed with suspicion those who had supported De la Torre?s policies.

The revolt, never more than a brushfire, was quickly suppressed over a period of two days but to the Spanish friars this violent act of insubordination was a golden opportunity to get rid of Filipino secular priests who had championed the Filipinization of the clergy -- an insistent demand seen at the forefront of a dangerous albeit incipient nationalism. This demand had grown to include not only the native clerics but Spanish mestizos as well. Among those swept into the net of suspected subversives or filibusteros were Frs. Mariano Gomez, curate of the nearby town of Bacoor, Cavite; and José Burgos and Jacinto Zamora, two curates of the prestigious Manila Cathedral.

Of the three, the most well-known was the brilliant, thirty-year-old doctor of theology Fr. Burgos, one of the most vocal and influential champions of the Filipino clergy. Tireless in his advocacy of Filipinizing the parishes, in 1869 Burgos penned ?To the Spanish People.? Reading this eloquent essay, one can see why the Spanish friars detested him. He rebutted the baseless charges levied against the secular priests by the friars in a local newspaper that favored the entrenched Spanish clerics. Burgos cited the main charge: ?The Filipino who dedicates himself to the sacred office of the priesthood is wont to carry out faithfully and well the mechanical detail of church work but he never attains to the point of excelling in anything connected with the solemn priestly functions.? In his rebuttal, Burgos highlights the friars? refusal to obey royal decrees commanding them to teach Spanish to their constituents. ?So resolutely do the friars carry their intentions to its undue lengths that they come to abhor in their parish the native who speaks Spanish.? (In Rizal?s Noli Me Tangere, published in 1887, a well-meaning school maestro in Crisostomo Ibarra?s hometown complains that when he greets Padre Damaso in Spanish, the rotund friar rebukes him for it and admonishes him to come ?only in his native clothes.?)

To Burgos the friars were ?sand in the cog wheels of the country?s civilization? who ?endeavor to keep the poor natives in a state of ignorance and boorishness? -- the better to maintain both their influence and affluence. To forestall any charges of treason, he reiterated how loyal the secular clergy was to mother Spain, while stressing their services in the past, and their being equal to the best of the friars. But the persistent disparaging of their abilities and character would lead many secular native priests later on to adopt nationalist causes. A breakdown of curacies in 1870 showed that out of a total of 792 parishes, 611 were administered by regular priests, i.e., Spanish clergy, and 181 by secular priests, almost all of whom were Filipino.

Burgos accused the friar orders of being in ?possession of great riches and profitable estate incomes which they do their best to keep away from the eyes of the government,? riches that are ?now unhappily available at all times and is too often put to ill use, in the indulgence of pleasure, in the transgression of the law, in the corruption of justice and in the infliction of harm to their fellowmen.? Strong, provocative words: In essence, Burgos had written a withering critique of not just the Spanish friars but colonialism itself.

The friars neither forgot nor forgave. In a mock trial, the clerics were promptly found guilty of plotting to overthrow the regime. Significantly, the Archbishop of Manila refused to defrock the trio, an implicit endorsement of their professed innocence, as well as a pointed rebuke of the friar orders, who continually resisted the diocesan bishop?s right to visitation. Barely a month after the failed mutiny, Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora were publicly executed at the Luneta by means of the garrote, an iron collar bound around the condemned?s neck and then twisted until the neck is broken. Burgos, the last to be killed, shouted that he was innocent, to which one of the attending friars chillingly replied, ?So was Jesus.? Others implicated in the mutiny were imprisoned and some, including other native priests, banished to the Marianas Islands. A few of the banished laymen managed to make their way to Europe, among them Joaquin Pardo De Tavera and Antonio Regidor, who, along with other Filipino émigrés, formed the small expatriate community that the later generation of Filipino upper middle class intellectuals, the Ilustrados, would join.

The 1872 Gomburza Affair, as it came to be known, planted the seeds of nationalist awakening in the younger generation, to come to fruition in the Propaganda Movement in less than a decade, culminating in the 1896 Revolution against Spain. (One of the Katipunan?s passwords was ?Gomburza.?) A new generation of young men grew up, a generation politicized by the state-sanctioned killings of three priests, and exposed to Enlightenment ideas from Europe. These Ilustrados gave voice and shape to the growing aspirations of not just their social class but the masses who, as usual, felt most keenly the boot of social and economic oppression. Rizal, who dedicated his second novel, El Filibusterismo, to the three martyrs, would declare that ?without 1872 there would now be neither Plaridel nor Jaena nor [Gregorio] Sancianco.? Plaridel of course was the nom de plume of Marcelo Del Pilar, whose withering satires of friar behavior had earned him their enmity, forcing him to flee to Europe in 1888. His parody of the Lord?s Prayer begins with ?Our substitute Father, who art in the convent, cursed be your name, your avarice be removed from us, your throat slit open on earth as it is in heaven.?

The might of the colonial church, expressed through the narrow mindedness of the power-hungry friar orders, was a major reason for the backwardness of the colony. While today the country may no longer be a monastic state (though an argument can be made that we still are), and while we can assign to politicians the role of greedy, corrupt friars, the Catholic Church continues to play its dominant role enthusiastically, and we are the worse for it. It actively opposes divorce and any meaningful family planning (our net birth rate is a disturbing 2 percent); rails against the use of condoms; bars women from priesthood and its priests from matrimony; and stigmatizes the human body in its manifestations of desire, looking upon sexuality as a necessary evil. It fosters mindlessness and quaint notions of spirituality, as seen for instance in the revival of indulgences, a kind of line of credit in case you end up in Purgatory (though theologically, it is said, neither heaven nor hell exist). A quip I once read on the Internet pointed out that being in a church doesn?t make one holy, any more than being in a garage makes one a car. During colonial times, Filipinos were screwed by both civil and religious authorities. It is no different today.