0.5 Opus dei book's darkened rizal & Why - chapter 5  (Page 13/14)

Pastells sent Rizal’s closest Jesuit mentor during his schooling, Fr. Sanchez, to Dapitan. Take as much time from late months of 1892 to early months of 1893 to work out his total return to the Catholicism of his youth, was his instruction. Pastells mightily tried to do the same by correspondence. He impliedly reported to Pastells what he later also repeated to Fr. Vilaclara in his February 1897 letter-reply: “He spoke to me with great frankness and told me he was an unbeliever and a Mason.” Moreover, in Spain, Germany, England (and France) he was an active Mason. That February 1897 letter-reply to Fr. Vilaclara’s inquiry has been dishonestly ignored and suppressed. It clearly shows that Rizal still considered himself a Mason in beliefs or creed, although rendered inactive. The Jesuit Miguel A. Bernad, whose earlier mid-1980s book typically misrepresented the alleged retraction as one pertaining solely to items of pure faith got it right more or less in his 2004 Rizal book by repeatedly calling him a “rationalist and agnostic.” In Dapitan he thus “did not receive the sacraments … he no longer believed in them.” And years before during his 1887 return home and visit to his old school, Bernad continued, when a Jesuit lay-brother presented to him a particular sacred image, Rizal replied, “I no longer believe in such things.” Let us please recall the May 9, 1895 letter to Blumentritt where this heroic paragon of honor and excellence sharply contrasted himself from a dear old college-and-university classmate: “He was a Catholic, a blind fervent believer who never questioned anything while I questioned and doubted everything.”

Insisting he Dropped Masonry for Mass

Like the nationalistic historians, mostly Catholics and retraction-respecting (partisans of the later Valenzuela’s edited false memories of Rizal as violent rebel) Dr. De Pedro will not let go of his myths: he tells himself and everyone else that Rizal regularly attended Sunday Mass in Dapitan all those years. Wild exaggeration this, just like his claim about Rizal breaking with Masonry on his second return to the country. Fr. Bernad, as previously cited, found no need for that misinterpretation, simply stressing that the hero kept away from the sacraments. Retana didn’t mention any regular Sunday Mass during Rizal’s entire Dapitan confinement. Paz Mendez, discoverer in the 1970s of Rizal’s marriage-application letter (showing no-retraction offer at all in exchange), implied he stood mainly in the back, near the door of the church and took no part in the sacraments. Fr. Balaguer himself in his infamous 1910 letter to Fr. Pio Pi said Rizal attended Sundays at Church during his last two years in Dapitan only occasionally. The evidence does show that Rizal during his first year in the Jesuit mission area of Dapitan regularly attended Sunday Church (Mass in that sense). But not during his entire four-year confinement. The historical marker at St. James misleads its readers into thinking that the chief Philippine national hero was a Catholic who regularly attended and participated at Mass during all those years in Dapitan .