Opus dei book's darkened rizal & Why

FRONT COVER

Rejected   Portrait in his Country of Its Top Hero

This is a mid-2011 update that bears on this work's claims. Early in 2011, in response to the Rizal World Conference’s call for abstracts of papers for presentation, I sent its PH organizers my one-page for a paper titled "A Disproof of Rizal's Retraction (That Still Hides His Core-Identity)." Towards mid-year I received a simple polite rejection. Below are lengthy quotes from that rejected abstract.

“Catholics (with few exceptions) I’ve exchanged with over the decades react right away to the title’s claim above that this is one more typical arrogant boasting from anti-Catholics emotionally unable to accept Rizal’s return to Catholicism. Rather is that claim distilled from my studies of the matter reported in three previously published slim books since 1996 to 1998 and late 2010. These found the existence of a continuously growing virtual mountain of conclusive no-retraction evidence and arguments—not needing, it turns out, the red herring of foreign handwriting experts’ consensus on authenticity. From decades-long experience I’d say most if not all Catholics, including their scholars, see no such evidence mountain staring them right in their faces and looming over them, so to say. However, scientifically oriented non-Catholics who seriously read its key building blocks get to see that evidence mountain. Especially the foreigners among them, my main source of encouragement in fact for plodding on unsupported in these studies on the real historical Rizal.

“Moreover, the ‘all-influencing’ historic retraction cannot be evaded, whether out of respect for Catholic sensitivities, or the increasingly popular, “It does not matter either way to his greatness and contributions.” Not so. Take the example of the retraction-evasive 1999 book by Dr. Quibuyen. That stance subtly influenced his painstaking over-stretching of Rizal into an 1896 Bonifacian rebel. Jumping to other examples: Because of his faith-influenced belief in the retraction, Dr. de Pedro in his 2005 book found Rizal to be a kind of Machiavellian sham-freethinker. More: before the Second World War and after, Catholic nationalist Jaime de Veyra rushed to invent the retractionist myth (since enshrined in Fort Santiago) of the Adios’ smuggling from the death cell in early evening of December 29,1896, reversing and nullifying thus its previous status of unretracting December 30,1896 Death Poem. And what about the Unamuno-invented retractionist myth of Rizal’s character being that of a weak indecisive Hamlet wanting violent rebellion but recoiling from its rivers of blood? Even in answering “Who really killed Rizal?”, one’s retraction stance affects the answers. Details are in [this] my latest work, which I should have titled but didn’t, as ‘W.O.W. PH, Blind to its Top Hero’s Core-Identity!’ “