0.3 Opus dei book's darkened rizal & Why - chapter 3  (Page 13/21)

Anyway, many years later in 1910, that obviously blundering and lying character Balaguer strained our credulity yet again: that from 11:30 on of the entire last night of the 29 ^th -30 ^th in the death cell he kept the signed document all to himself! No immediate relaying to his superiors and the authorities. Instead, he got completely immersed in ministering to the piously reconverting convict. And, note well: he got busy too in writing a journal-record of the awesomely unfolding historic events. He only started to relay the precious document to his Jesuit Superior when Rizal marched off to his death with the execution party at about 6:30 in the morning. His Jesuit Superior, in turn, took his time too in immediately reporting and relaying the document to the Archbishop later in the morning, when Rizal was already dead, with no further tales to tell. When the latter received it by late morning, he gave it to his secretary for safekeeping, not even bothering to send it to the Governor-General. By his own testimony, the Archbishop did not first show the document to the Governor-General before entrusting the document to his secretary for safekeeping by the Church. All this tells us critical sleuthing types that the entire retractions tales could only have been so confusedly announced and covered up as a fabrication. For comparison: apply the same skeptical investigative method and findings on Rizal’s December 15, 1896 Letter to Countrymen on why he categorically opposed the 1896 uprising against Spain. Some retraction-respecting highly nationalistic scholars have tried to explain away that cited letter as a probable forgery. Or, it was allegedly forced upon its imprisoned author who justifiably publicly lied to save his own life. Some of them argued this way passionately a few years ago on webmaster Dr. Robert Yoder’s worldwide discussion group on the Internet. I participated in those very heated discussions and received a lot of flak for a nonviolent Rizal over-relying perhaps on the role of reasoned discourse as the way to earn more and more rights including eventual independence. The strong efforts to explain away the December 15 Letter in the ways just mentioned could and did not prosper, no matter how nationalistically one wanted to make Rizal a contributing participant somehow of the rebellion against Spain. The claims that it was either forgery or forced writing were just too fantastic, and so discussions on them petered out and faded. Next for my stand on the retraction, my stand on an anti-rebellion Rizal has received the most number of objections and insults.

Back to Bizarre Balaguer

In 1910, some 14 years later after the alleged fact, Balaguer began explaining and elaborating on how he obtained Rizal’s recantation. And what he did with it. Having finished dictating the Archbishop-approved formula to the Hell-fearing and piously submissive Rizal at 11:30 P.M. of the ‘29 ^th ’, he kept the long-sought trophy-document all to himself the whole night through in the death cell. There it remained with him all night in the death cell while he continued ministering to the piously confessing and repenting convict. He recorded too in a historic journal all the unfolding subsequent events. No, he mentioned no immediate relaying here of the precious trophy-document to either his Jesuit Superior or to the Archbishop, as duty demanded, and to save Rizal’s life from execution seven-and-a-half hours hence. As Rizal marched to his death at 6:30 A.M., he left the death cell to at last relay the document to his Jesuit Superior, who must have received it at about the time its alleged maker was being shot and no longer able to tell explain further or say more. (Except in his ‘twice-delivered’ death poem in the keepsakes and shoes.) The Jesuit Superior in turn leisurely made a copy for the Jesuit archives, not rushing at all to hand over the original copy to the Archbishop later in the morning. No, the Archbishop does not bother to show it at all, even if too late for reconsideration of sentence, to the Governor-General at the top of the formal chain of command. He gives it to his secretary for safekeeping. Readers, I assure you all this is in their respective testimonies as gathered together and reproduced in priest-scholar Cavanna’s monumental work on the subject. Rooted deeply in Catholic faith and ideology he, like Opus Dei priest-scholar Dr. Javier de Pedro some half-a-century later, couldn’t see penetratingly through the highly revealing implications I’ve teased out justifiably from them.