0.5 Opus dei book's darkened rizal & Why - chapter 5  (Page 6/14)

Our iconic subject’s joining Masonry at 21 should be regarded the really significant event in his fast transformation in Spain into a full-fledged rationalist freethinker. Not in Paris months late at 22 did that occur. But did he in fact join Masonry when still 21? The expert on this is Reynold S. Fajardo in his 1998 book on Rizal’s Masonic life and career titled Dimasalang. Regrettably, he found that original documents showing the exact date of formal acceptance into Masonry no longer existed. In the book’s later enlarged revised version some years later, he stuck to that finding. But Fajardo did publish the boyish-looking picture of the hero in full Masonic regalia or costume. He certainly looked no older than 22! More important: he looked a lot younger than 21. Yet we know he couldn’t have joined earlier than mid-21. Let’s settle, then, for late 21. The well-known historian Esteban de Ocampo’s 1961 “Rizal’s Concept of World Brotherhood” gives the year 1883 in which the hero joined Masonry in Madrid’s Acacia Lodge. He didn’t state the month. If after June 19, he would have been 22; if months earlier, 21. I stumbled on a nondescript old reader of essays on the hero which included a piece from a Yason Banal. He cited 1883 as the year of the hero’s entry into Masonry. He didn’t give the month either, nor any further references. That being the case the months before June 19, 1883 in Madrid appears to be the best estimate of when he officially turned official into a church-condemned Masonic freethinker. The long summer in what De Pedro called freethinking Masonic Paris represented culminating confirmation of that, and more deepening studies into the matter. Go look at the boyish-looking picture of his in full Masonic regalia looking like 21 or younger to convince yourself this makes sense.

Ever-deepening as Masonic Rationalist

Fr. Balaguer, after Pastells in mid-January 1897 first announced him under highly suspicious circumstances to be the Church’s chief witness-obtainer of the retraction, then told among other things how he dictated its Masonry detestation part. Recall from chapter three: “I abominate Masonry as enemy that it is of the Church.” The hero objected at first, because he felt this would hurt his fellow Masons when they learned about it later. Very nice people they were, those he met in London where he had joined Masonry. Balaguer’s self-revealing tale of Rizal’s initial objection with its error on where the hero joined (instead of in Madrid much earlier) reveals that conversation never happened. This alleged compromise of theirs never happened but here it is again for our reference: “I abominate Masonry as the enemy it is of the Church.” Just as words put in his mouth by Balaguer and Pastells—“Spain and other countries ruined me”—never happened but should be protested as ongoing retraction-rooted insults to his character and Masonic humanist creed. Or faith, in its broad sense of belief or creed, in which he used the term with Pastells himself in 1993 and in his subsequent two greatest poems from Dapitan and the death cell respectively.