0.2 Opus dei book's darkened rizal & Why - chapter 2  (Page 5/16)

Deep inside his core of cores the otherwise fully heretical sounding Rizal, according to De Pedro, retained his old faith’s absolute essentials, although this dwindled with time and his ‘cafeteria style’ stance increasingly appeared inconsistent with his self-regarding essential Catholicism. Yes, De Pedro unbelievably claimed like most of the textbooks on the hero, that through all his no-holds-barred attacks on Catholicism and its theocracy, Rizal still somehow considered himself a Catholic. For, he allegedly had left Masonry, and he regularly went to Sunday Mass during his four-year confinement in Dapitan. (Both are overblown half-truths at best calculated to mislead that I deal with elsewhere in this work.) And twice in 1895 he tried to publicly recant, De Pedro stressed. However, his evidence here cites Jesuit yarns originating with Fr. Obach. Supposedly, early in that year, Rizal agreed to retract in exchange for a marriage license. But later in the same year he no longer wished to do so for that reason but for a Dapitan release, lots of money and land for his business-related plans. Irresponsible scurrilous talk this, which I read also from a popular newspaper column of Jesuit historian Arcilla years ago. Really, the Jesuits should come clean with all the hard evidence on this tale (and on their other retraction-related claims detailed in the next chapter). Or else stop spreading these slurs on Rizal’s character. Why is Dr. De Pedro saying all these bad things in the guise of research findings? Why is Catholicism’s Opus Dei organization supporting and propagating his book and its main claims worldwide? And, why haven’t Philippine educators and historians, both from academia and outside, such as the so-called Knights, Ladies, Youths, and Descendants of Rizal, even Masonry (the only organization to declare the retraction a fake) protested in outrage against the book’s demolition job on their greatest exemplar’s character and prime teachings?

Why hasn’t anyone from academia or outside defended him as being, on the contrary, a principled church-and-theocracy-killed man of science? Why the continuing respectful silence over so profound a vilification of probably the greatest Indian of them all who ever lived ?

The social critic Manuel Almario’s sent this to our Internet group on May 3 last year citing the role here of the disciples “of the Church in academe and society [who] continue to distort and emasculate his teachings …” But I would add Rizal’s “the lamentable indolence predisposition” in which he included apathy towards hard serious reading and thought. Catholicism’s teachings on Rizal’s alleged retraction of beliefs, works, and other related errors remains a powerful influence. This extends to the respect given the Church, its priests and faithful so as avoid offending their sensitivities over the matter. Hence these historians, biographers, teachers and other opinion makers have rather specialized and cultivated ‘safe’ areas of his teachings and life’s lighter events (such as his romances, fantasized link to Hitler, etc.). A relatively safe area has been the over-cultivation of his imagined apostleship of anti-colonial nationalism and revolution by nationalistic Catholics and their retraction-respecting colleagues. Distortions have come in through this route as when he is wrongly or dishonestly said to have been a pro-independence separatist or rebel against Spain. It only looked as if he fought it. His beef against it merely dwelled on preparations, timing, other tactical considerations against his alleged chief enemy, Spain, which killed him for that. This still reigning retraction-respecting nationalistic paradigm naturally covered over the real historical Rizal’s core-identity as a church-and-theocracy martyred scientific freethinker of individual rights for radical self-transformation under church-state separation. That in a nutshell is what I expound in this paradigm-replacing critique rising from the ashes of the retraction’s total destruction. Much new thinking rises from its ashes. In view of this one can now say that the long-nursed obsession to obtain Rizal’s retraction by means fair or foul at his most vulnerable moments led to its foul forging called for by Plan B. All the more does the latter show, in turn, the dominant role of religious motives in his death-dealing frame-up as an accused rebel. And in his immediate execution to seal his lips forever.