0.2 Opus dei book's darkened rizal & Why - chapter 2  (Page 12/16)

Isn’t it time we resolved these Rizal-related issues? Was Bonifacio and his top rebels right in falsely using Rizal behind his back to recruit and wage war against Spain, even when they later learned of his firm objections? Should we seriously consider Elizabeth Medina’s defense of the hero, as shared by M. Hamada and others? The former reminded our Internet group last year: “Liberated slaves will turn into even more corrupt [inept] masters …Our history proved Rizal right.” Under my cover-up exposing critique’s paradigm breaking and replacing of the retraction-respecting teachings these issues fully clear up, and full veneration with understanding of Rizal as a world hero of human dignity can be rendered without any reservations. Cleared up by it as well is the related all-important question of why until this late time in the 21 st century hasn’t the rational scientific revolution this hero called for most of all among his Fourth and Third World peoples happened? In a wide and deep enough extent for entry into First World. Isn’t Rizal, after all, an accidentally imposed chief hero of a people still very unlike him? Explore these ‘dynamite’ questions—inspired by this critique’s new paradigm—with your otherwise bored students and see them and learning come to life! Between you and me you can tell them that broadly speaking we can still regard Rizal as Father of the Philippine Independence Movement, but whose highly impatient armed revolutionary wing was founded by his nemesis, Andres Bonifacio. The former woke up minds through his tireless pioneering efforts at consciousness-raising, with reminders of their superstitious religiosities being mentality-damaging roadblocks to emancipating progress. His writings encouraged dreams of forming a united highly civilized nation of Filipinos made ready by radical transformations of selves, institutions, culture. And here I suggest we take off for a day or two before continuing to get more deeply into this open letter. Come back from your break, please, if only for our shared subject’s sake, for tons more of substance that needs to be known and shared.

Over the decades I’d grown increasingly cynical that Filipinos would ever give their falsely venerated chief hero the hard work of sustained serious reading of his amazing life and works. Not just the novels but the essays and letters. Dr. De Pedro’s recent Opus Dei-sponsored book, with its renewal of the Church’s cover-up of the real historical Rizal and his prime mission, stirred in me the old outrage at the nonstop belittling misrepresentations of this church-and-theocracy killed champion of individual rights (for self-transformation). It stirred me to try one more time in joining voices with the marginalized few like Margarita Hamada, one who calls himself Dr. Jose P. Rizal II in the Internet, and the few others who take a radically different evidence-based perspective on our iconic hero. It bears repeating that his true nature has been successfully covered over by the retraction-respecting over-nationalistic perspectives of nearly all the textbooks, biographies, and articles on him. Even the mid-1950s Rizal law mandating schools to teach his two famous novels most especially promoted this false paradigm? For, it stayed away respectfully from the inescapable retraction issue, and it falsely singled out nationalistic patriotism as the highest Rizalian value to be learned from his novels and life. By paying such respect towards the Church’s retraction claims, the law implied that the issue didn’t matter anyway, either way, to appreciations of the hero’s greatness, significance, and outstanding personal qualities. On the contrary, as I show here, it does matter, immensely in fact. And, did you ever stop to rethink whether nationalistic patriotism should rightfully trump Rizal’s message of individual freedoms and self-transformation first through lifelong serious studies? And which formed the base of what Rizal meant by ‘dignification of the race’. Should nationalistic patriotism trump the value of disciplined civic-mindedness? Of honest facing and pursuit of truth wherever it leads? Didn’t Rizal in fact view nationalistic patriotism an antiquated sickness in his Enlightenment-based ideal of a future scientifically and morally perfected humanity?