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Opus Dei Book's Darkened Rizal and Why - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Still Attacking His Masonic Scientific Character

Philippines is one of those… where politics is not

issues-oriented…. When will its voters ever mature?

R. Tulfo, Inquirer , 8/27/2009

No nation has … such a stupid energy policy than we have.

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 influence 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-scientific depths of the national hero’s Masonic scientific 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 reflections at deeper foundational levels but rather driven by conflicting 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.com , with a copy to him. He revived a very 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 21 st 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 suffered 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 magnificent defense of his heroic friend’s sterling character and radical reformist mission, implying firmly that he did not retract. Nor did he espouse violent rebellion in 1896. This firsthand 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 influence 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 official orthodoxy, thus distorting and reversing peoples’ understanding of him as martyred nationalistic rebel.

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Source:  OpenStax, Opus dei book's darkened rizal & Why. OpenStax CNX. Mar 20, 2011 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11225/1.2
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