0.4 Opus dei book's darkened rizal & Why - chapter 4  (Page 4/9)

Patriotism as described in the Noli me tangere…. his love for the country…had little in common with the nationalist exaltation that derives from the mistaken principle of unity of destiny and has filled with blood all the paths of the world under the labels of German spirit, Russian spirit, Anglo-Saxon spirit , to mention just a few. Much less was it related to the nationalism that would be skillfully manipulated by Marxist theoreticians….In the Noli there is patriotism…a virtue that moves men to honor the country and to participate in the realization of common good as loyal citizens…

That’s from page 82, De Pedro noting its compatibility with universalistic aspects of Catholic Christian thought.

Only a Hypothesis, not Solid Theory?

However, what concerns us most in this chapter is De Pedro’s earlier report centering on his anti-Catholic freethinker finds about his iconic subject when barely 22 in summer in Paris. And how the latter in a eureka moment of enlightenment then embarked on a “total war of extermination against the religious establishment [including its faith-shield] in Noli me tangere ”. That paraphrases his own words on the matter. Here is the key formulation of his freethinker find, which of course I consider too understated and subconsciously influenced by his championing of Rizal’s alleged retraction of church-condemned beliefs and works.

I propose the hypothesis of a sudden enlightenment, the consequence of an extraordinarily intense emotional reaction which transformed the twenty-two-year-old Jose Rizal into a freethinker in a few days’ time… in Paris, summer of 1883…. Indignation [at Paciano’s latest on priestly abuse] and passion for revenge had transformed the twenty-two-year-old into a freethinker…From that moment on Rizal jumped into action, and the Noli [done at 25] would be its outcome.

So did this review-essay’s Opus Dei book by Dr. Javier de Pedro announce on page 51 a major finding of his painstaking research over many long years. I would call your serious attention to its telltale words and tones expressive of and indicating the influence of its author’s faith and belief in Rizal’s alleged retraction. Hence, not at all was the conversion and transformation implied in his announcement that of a fully cumulatively convinced freethinker, and even starting when he was still 18 as I shall contend. It was ‘a sudden enlightenment’ at age 22. It was an emotion-driven transformation; intellectually half-baked at most, darkly inspired for revenge against a really small bunch of personally hated Spanish regular missionary priests called friars. And which could be repented for and retracted at the end of his life.

“The removal of the [religious] cancer was … a duty”, Rizal felt deeply according to De Pedro on his page 55 and other pages of his book. At least he is clear, like Austin Coates was in his famous 1968 work, that Rizal did not regard Spain’s rule itself as the social cancer for removal. He and I would disagree with Coates, however, that Rizal was not anti-Catholic. He supposedly did not attack the friars’ dogmatically instilled faith-shield. This is typical historian’s blindness. He did! For that matter all churchly official condemnations of his first book, including the postwar one of the Philippine Hierarchy have denounced Rizal extreme Voltairean attacks on dogmas, doctrines and related key practices. But we can all agree, I think, that even as he attacked Spanish maladministration as a cancer, deep down he admired Spain as a democratizing great nation and civilization, for all its reverses, troubles and crises. It got to First World, didn’t it, towards end of the 20 ^th century? De Pedro wrote: