Chapter 5
Still Attacking His Masonic Scientic Character Philippines is one of those. . . where politics is not issues-oriented. . .. When will its voters ever mature?
[U+2500]R. Tulfo, Inquirer, 8/27/2009
No nation has. . . such a stupid energy policy than we have.
[U+2500] A. Magno, Star, 11/6/2010 Unamuno's Greatest Blunder
Dr. De Pedro's Opus Dei-sponsored spiritual biography of Rizal promotes the still reigning view of the Philippine chief national hero as a Catholic overall: he lost much of it abroad but sort of kept it at core with a full retraction at death. Popular Philippine textbooks reader like that more or less. The commercial bestselling textbook of the two Dr. Zaides pander falsely on their page 185:Rizal refused to give up his Catholic faith...He remained loyal to the Catholic religion. In the face of Rizal's own well-known frank admission to Fr. Sanchez in their long months together in 1892-93 that he was an unbeliever and a Mason, and such other information you would have to be either dishonest or deluded to say what the Zaides said.
The priest who recently informed the Inquirer of a vandal's insult to Rizal at his big monument in Madrid with the words Mierda de Mason, explained too that the hero joined Masonry to help liberate his people.
But near death he renounced it to fully reembrace Catholicism. Who lied more really: the mierda vandal, or the priest-informant who supplied false explanation under the inuence of the reigning retraction-respecting nationalistic paradigm?
De Pedro's painstakingly researched version of a retracting Rizal killed by Spain as an accused violent rebel denied the philosophic-scientic depths of the national hero's Masonic scientic humanism. In his core of cores the most basic Catholic dogmas remained intact, though in decline. He just cruelly pretended to be a fully anti-Catholic rationalist tormentor of some personally detested friars, by painting them all black. Like the great philosophical writer and Cervantes-specialist Miguel de Unamuno in 1907, he tried to show that Rizal's studies in the very large subject of Enlightenment rationalism was incomplete, that of an amateur, not going deep below surfaces. And not sustained by continuing studies and reections at deeper foundational levels but rather driven by conicting emotional, psychological and political motives incorporating colonial liberation concerns with rights and reforms. Reasonable it was that at death he could repent and retract since his central core identity remained that of a Catholic.
This brings me to mention the broadsheet Inquirer's columnist John Nery in a recent piece of his I responded to by sending a reply to RP-Rizal@yahoogroups.com2 , with a copy to him. He revived a very
1This content is available online at <http://cnx.org/content/m37216/1.1/>.
2RP-Rizal@yahoogroups.com
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57
old pertinent issue of why Unamuno, on the basis of false information from the Jesuit Pastells, attacked Rizal's character. And, indirectly for me, Nery revived the question of why to this late date in the 21st century hardly anyone has defended this martyred national hero's character with the outrage it deserves?
Unamuno, basing his attack on the Jesuit Pastells' anti-Masonic Rizal y su obra, claimed that the hero's character suered from an indecisively weak streak, from a prideful presumptuousness, dreamily averse to the impurities of reality typical of many romantic poets of his type. Dr.Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, who knew the hero well, both personally and in his writings, stood out from among the few who publicly defended the latter's honor. In fact he gave the earliest magnicent defense of his heroic friend's sterling character and radical reformist mission, implying rmly that he did not retract. Nor did he espouse violent rebellion in 1896. This rsthand defense has been ignored and scorned to this day thanks to partisan nationalists like the previously mentioned Dr. Floro Quibuyen. And the dominance to this day of what this ongoing work of mine, seemingly without end, has called the retraction-respecting nationalistic paradigm. Those under its inuence cannot forgive Pardo de Tavera for eagerly convincing the Spain-replacing Americans of the hero's nonviolent radical reformism. They opportunistically turned that patriotic humanist view of the hero into ocial orthodoxy, thus distorting and reversing peoples' understanding of him as martyred nationalistic rebel.
Here's how Nery put the matter in his October 19, 2010 column. In his late 1910s monograph Pardo rebutted these insulting criticisms on the hero's principled character and core-identity: They are not based on anything real . . . supported by any act . . . He desired [most of all] the advancement and welfare of the Filipino people. . .His dream was to conquer by reason an era of [individual] liberty and rights. . .. He advocated study and studied. . . died without inching. . . Pardo rejected the Pastells-provided claim that shortly before being executed, Rizal said to his confessor: My [prideful] presumption has ruined me. . .. It is in Spain and in foreign countries where I was ruined. Pastells' anonymous 1897 anti-Rizal book bore the imprimatur of Barcelona's archbishopric; it joined in the denunciation of the hero as a criminally seditious apostate. Nery could not help concluding that these claims make Rizal confess in an indirect way that his execution was just and deserved. Of course, obviously!, as explained in chapter three, remember?, in one of the disproofs to the alleged retraction's fth guilt-admitting sentence.
Nery missed a big timely opportunity in raising his readers' consciousness of his essay's full signicance and context. I think this arose from censoring himself in fully disclosing and stirring up still highly sensitive thoughts and feelings touching on the alleged Balaguer-extracted retraction. Recall from chapter three's disproof that Pastells it was who rst made it ocial for both the Jesuits and the church. in Barcelona.
Rizal's own December 29-30, 1896 retraction and oral confessions directly and indirectly admitted his being turned into a violent rebel by Masons, liberals and freethinkers abroad. It may be unfair to expect Nery to say something touching on that to his mainly Catholic readers. However, he did agree with Pardo de Tavera's insistence on the inner strength, dignity, delity to principles and reason of Rizal. He knew full well he had never been ruined in Spain and other European countries.
Attacks' Fancy Updating by De Pedro
The scandalous attacks by Unamuno and Pastells (well-meaning in the former's case) on Rizal's character meant to attack as well the deepest foundations and integrity of his Masonic scientic humanism. It belongs to the family of retraction-rooted attacks on his otherwise sterling character and honor. De Pedro's attacks, on the other hand, belongs to the latest most sophisticated developed kind, being his book's central scholarly purpose to report and defend. Let us quote at some length to see this:
The psychic tension of young Rizal in his search of a formula to lead his people along the path of progress, at a moment in his life when his Christian life was weak,
because of the neglect of sacraments and prayer, the reading of authors hostile or dangerous to the faith, and the company he kept, crystallized in the sudden illumination of [Paciano's letter dated in] May 1883 as a result of the emotional impact. . .Rizal arrived at the subjective certainty. . .[of] the friars, a social cancer that had to be removed for the Philippine people to be saved . . .. The eective solution was to provoke the people, making them see how wrong it was to permit themselves to be dominated by [them]. . .. making it possible to establish the secular system of government that would be instrumental for the introduction of much needed reforms. Rizal's subjective evidence did not come from the facts themselves. . ..Rizal erred
59 gravely in his generalized judgments about the friars as a religious and social group.
It is necessary to underscore a trait that may not be perceived at rst sight: Rizal, by constitution, had a Romantic temperament. . . [a] reaction to the dryness of the Enlightenment. . ..The Romantic spirit fed on (exaltation of feelings and) on contradictions in opposition to cold reason. . .Remarks like that appear in many parts of his pro-church book including these below reminiscent of a similar one rst made by Unamuno:
It should be said that the originator of how the freethinker Rizal could retract so completely during the entire last night of December 29-30, 1896 was not De Pedro but the world's best Cervantes expert ever (according to Harold Bloom). Unamuno oered this imsy hypothesis in his long Epilogue in W. E. Retana's rst complete biography of the hero, published in Madrid in 1907. Otherwise full of praises for his fellow liberal schoolmate (a couple of years ahead) he uncritically accepted the basic retraction version of Balaguer and Pastells. Recall that his was rst declared anonymously in January-February 1897 in Barcelona, then made ocial for the Church later in the year in Rizal y su obra. Unamuno glossed over Rizal's science, philosophy and history studies and lifelong life of thought and insisted wrongly that he remained essentially an amateur in regard to freethinking rationalism's foundations and depths. The latter did not dive deep into the sustained depths of anti-Catholic Voltaireanism. Enlightenment rationalism's sociopolitical agenda attracted him mainly. In his mostly poetic and Romantic heart of hearts some essential embers of his boyhood's fond faith burst ablaze with such blinding light and inspiration that he could not resist.
That's how his otherwise highly admired Madrid schoolmate accounted for the spontaneous retraction at death's doors. And why it could be manifested so piously, so passionately, so completely all nightlong of December 29-30, 1896. Unamuno did no critical research on it, seemed ignorant of Rizal's utterly profane Voltairean essays beyond the novels, the fully rationalist essays, and so on as he spun yarns about the weak nature of Rizal's character: indecisive like a Hamlet, Romantic poetic dreamer like a Quijote, repelled by reality's impurities, desiring bloody revolution and recoiling from its rivers of blood. Unamuno coined a word for him: a Catholic freebeliever! Philippine historians and biographers, the wildly hailed lmbio years ago by producer-director M. Abaya, jumped on that bandwagon. De Pedro should have given credit to Unamuno for their shared views. He didn't.
A Secret Budding Freethinker by 18?
By all accounts he seemed possessed of an inborn sensitivity to injustice. You feel that in Noli me tangere bristles in its implied criticisms of inept and corrupt administration. What should be equally regarded inborn and inherent in is author is his passionate intellectual curiosity to nd out and ask deep questions as to the why of things, events and appearances. In sharp contrast to his peers he read voraciously both school and non-school books to quench an inner yearning to know and think a lot more about what he was nding out. That inborn drive could not be completely smothered or channeled into culturally and religiously correct ways whether at home, with one's peers, or with his Jesuit and Dominican professors. When still a teenager at around 17 he started manifesting telltales of his dangerous doubting and questioning nature, as he himself implied in the important May 9, 1895 letter to Blumentritt. He alluded to in his Memorias that he started writing a year later. It broke into a poetic epiphany restrained an coded just enough to escape the theocratic censors' radar as a prize-worthy poem addressed to Philippine youth. But he in eect challenged it desperately to revolutionize its brains and minds, a central obsession of freethinkers worldwide they will tell you, since it is a core-aspect of the freethinker's creed. This paraphrasing summary in verse catches the prize-winning poem's essence, and the emerging permanent aspects of its young author's core-identity, his internal image of himself. It just kept constantly developing throughout his short life of 35 years.
Break free this day timid minds from your chainsShackles t for brutes bred in dark captivity;Climb to peaks of thought, talent, art, science,Dare thus to redeem self then people and others.
That is a natural freethinker's song! It reverberates in his December 1882 letter to Paciano on how he wished people back home were more enlightened, honest, intelligent, progressive. How is it that the adolescent Rizal was already voicing such thoughts so early in his later full transformation towards freethinking Masonic scientic humanism and world citizenship? Rizal scholars know he could keep secrets, and put them in code in his diary, satires and essays. He restrained his freethinker's outrage and ranting disgust with so much ignorance, absurd doctrines, superstitiousness, stupidity, dishonesty, injustice, etc. Thus such severities, thunder and lightning he toned down in the Noli me tangere while in Germany. Understandably, for prudence,
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he did not want to totally alienate his Catholic readers, religious family members, friends and countrymen.
He certainly toned down letters to his very pious mother, worried sick about his growing dangerous apostasy, to the point of intentional vagueness in some letters to her. He hid deep feelings of disgust and revulsion at so much fanaticism, absurd inculcated doctrines and rituals. Perhaps too much did he at times soften his complete shipwreck of faith. Considering that his total cultural upbringing and education in the theocratic colony included imposed total indoctrination in Catholicism and instruction in defense and accord with it, how indeed was it possible to burst out at 18 with an essentially freethinker's poem? You should reread aloud, word for word, that verse-gist of his youth's noblest poem. Its central freethinker's thoughts remained constant with him, up through the very end in what I've correctly called his December 30, 1896 Constancy Swan Song. For, constancy to earliest patriotic dreams, clamors, teachings and creed from about 17 on until death at 35 was its central running theme. This is utterly contrary to how the retraction-respecting nationalists who antedated and neutralized the poem tell its meanings. Visit historic Fort Santiago's Adios room, and see what I meanto your outrage I hope.
That is the Rizal his ignored and scorned friend, Dr. Trinidad Pardo de Tavera defended magnicently from both the retractionists and revolution-espousing nationalists. From my own work's ndings, I'd have to say Pardo de Tavera's turns out to be the objectively accurate version of Rizal he made known to the conquering Americans at the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th. The baed unbelieving racial supremacists couldn't believe there existed such noble scientic humanist among natives whom they scorned as Pacic Negroes. But their own topmost leaders, scholars, biographers, writers, as a whole eventually conrmed Pardo de Tavera's understanding of the hero. Those who overcame their racism embraced Rizal as their own admirable hero as well and co-sponsored his rise to chief national hero above all others. In respect to this chapter's title-topic, it should be observed that they as a whole never insulted his character and Masonic scientic humanism, as the Spaniards and Filipinos cited here did. Rizal surely reminded the leading Spain-replacing Americans of the noblest thoughts of their own Enlightenment-inspired founding fathers and early leaders, many of them freethinkers and Masons themselves. Luck favored this conrmation of him as deserving chief hero because this nonviolent humanistic image of him suited their pacication needs and self-proclaimed civilizing mission of radically transforming a Fourth and Third World people towards the requirements of a future First World nation-state. Putting it in today's modern terms, Pardo de Tavera told the surprised Americans that his close heroic friend Rizal sought most of all the total radical improvement of his people (from the Fourth and Third Worlds) towards parity in mentality and achievement levels with that of the First World.
That's putting it in modern terms but that is what the martyred Masonic freethinker Rizal was about, he who in 1892-1893 rmly told Jesuits Sanchez and Pastells that he was an unbeliever. Strangely, De Pedro himself noted that in the school year 1878-79 in Manila the 17-year-old Rizal himself started to doubt everything, to question everything. Is it possible the storm refers to in his Memorias, initiated just a year later, refers to these doubts? Yes, Dr. De Pedro, in view of this chapter and the previous one. And in view of his poetic freethinker's cry at 18. The previous chapter suggested the historically momentous induction into Church-condemned and demonized (as Satanic) Freemasonry took place in Madrid, this with help from his own highly impressed Masonic professor. Most likely when he was still 21, especially in view of his just mentioned freethinker predilections when still in adolescence. A very large overlap in both membership and beliefs existed between Masonry and freethinking rationalism. The former's popular Scottish Rite motto is an Enlightenment freethinker's creed as well: Human progress is our cause, liberty of thought our supreme wish, freedom of conscience our mission, and equal rights to all people our ultimate goal. A deeply shared value of both was lifelong study for continuous improvement of mind and morals. In Masonry Rizal found another learning center for deepening his Masonic scientic humanist studies. It believed too in church-state separation and the required belief in a nonsectarian Architect of the Universe. As a typical scientic rationalist freethinker of the times, Rizal believed in such a deistic-theist God. He prayed to it but without asking for personal favors and miracles on his and others' behalf. It or he was for him guide to conscience and moral choices. Its or his chief revelation was to be apprehended from nature itself and not scriptures. At times he described unknowable qualities of his ineable God in agnostic terms and overtones. Most if not all Masons of his acquaintance thought like him in a fully liberal-progressive brotherhood of self-improvement
61 seekers. His turning into a Mason when still 21 follows naturally in the wake of his previously cited budding freethinker's poem of 1879, and the December 1882 letter to Paciano.
That's the creed he supposedly denounced in his sweepingly worded retraction. Rather did he rmly rearm it deantly in his December 30, 1896 Constancy Swan Song: Constant am I in repeating the essentials of my faith. He explained to Fr. Pastells a few years earlier that he used the word faith in its sense of factually and logically reasoned beliefs, rather than in the usual sense of fe, or
faith. He used that one-syllable word in his poems because, unlike English. Spanish lacked a powerful and poetic one-syllable word for creed or belief, other than fe. He surely included his belief in Masonry's faith or creed in that quoted line from Adios. His Masonic humanist creed ever deepened in his mature years, as in his famous 1890s speech before his Masonic brotherhood, on Science, Virtue, Work in Masonry. Some
faith. He used that one-syllable word in his poems because, unlike English. Spanish lacked a powerful and poetic one-syllable word for creed or belief, other than fe. He surely included his belief in Masonry's faith or creed in that quoted line from Adios. His Masonic humanist creed ever deepened in his mature years, as in his famous 1890s speech before his Masonic brotherhood, on Science, Virtue, Work in Masonry. Some