What I would have written last week

I apologize to my readers for not writing my columns last week. I was in Ormoc for the wedding of my youngest son, Eduardo. While on the visit my husband fell ill and he had to be hospitalized for a few days. Between the joyful wedding and the stressful job of taking care of my husband, it was not possible to write. But all the time, I kept thinking of a theme that has occupied me for sometime now on what really is behind the Church or to be more precise, the CBCP and some bishops’ efforts to block Charter change in the Philippines. The issue is far more complex than what is made to appear as moral leadership. There are both specific and general reasons on why the Catholic Church in the Philippines should interfere so boldly in affairs of the state. Some Filipinos, if vaguely, know it goes back to our colonial history when Spain used the religious friars to govern the country. The Americans, if more indirectly, continued the tradition by giving the Church tax-free privileges. However, there are more subtle and difficult reasons in order to intelligently understand how the Church came to its self-appointed political role. Too few Filipinos are aware of this aspect which to me is important to enable us today to make our own judgments rather than to follow blindly bishops who use their ecclesiastical authority for political ends.

In a meticulously researched book, The Jesus Papers, Michael Baigent wrote on the early beginnings of the Roman Catholic Church. I would like to use an anecdote in the book to illustrate my point.

The anecdote happened in 5 August 1234, three centuries before the friars arrived in the Philippines but as the French historian Braudel wrote "basic underlying history (la longue duree) evolves so slowly it is not even visible."

A poor woman lay on her deathbed in a house in Toulouse. She belonged to the Cathars, a mysterious Christian religious group that was widespread in the south of France at the time. This religion was said to be both despised and feared by Rome. On that day some Cathar priests visited the woman to give her the faith’s most sacred rite, the consolamentum before giving her the last rites of their religion. Unfortunately she was being spied upon and the informer rushed to give word to the prior of the House of the Inquisitors.

The Dominican Inquisitors were with the bishop of Toulouse, who had just said mass to honor their founder, Dominic de Guzman. The monks were about to begin the celebration when the prior was told of the woman openly accepting the forbidden Cathar rites. The prior notified the bishop and adamantly told the inquisitors to deal with this outrage to the true religion without delay, even stopping their meal celebration and rushed to the dying woman’s house. They entered her room so suddenly that a friend who wanted to warn her came too late.

The bishop calmly talked with her about her beliefs. Since she thought he was a Cathar, she spoke freely, eager to receive the Cathar rites before her impending death. The bishop led her on encouraging her to talk. "You must not lie. I say that you are to be steadfast in your belief, not in fear of death and that you ought to confess anything other than what you believe and hold firmly in your heart. The dying woman of Cathar faith replied "My lord, what I say I believe and I shall not change my commitment out of concern for the miserable remnant of my life. At this the bishop became angry and shouted she was a heretic and before all the others in the room said her faith was the faith of the heretics. Accept what the Roman and Catholic Church believes, he ordered.

The dying woman refused. So the bishop, invoking Jesus Christ, formally pronounced her a heretic and therefore punishable by death. She was immediately picked up and carried still on her bed, to a meadow outside the city owned by the count of Toulouse where she was immediately burned to death.

Indeed, how slow Braudel’s la longue duree history takes place. Three centuries later we have a similar anecdote. Until today, the question of whether Rizal retracted on the last day of his life the ideas in his writings remains. According to author Manuel Vano, the archbishop Most Reverend Bernardino Nozaleda, himself, testified that on the 29th of December 1896, Rizal ‘persisted in his errors contrary to the Catholic faith as the friars understood it’. He cites evidence that Rizal did not retract.

On the last day of his life none of the priests succeeded in convincing him during their religious discussions with him. From their testimonies, it is clear that the views and beliefs he was espousing until 11:30 p.m. of 29 December 1896 were those of a rationalist and a modernist.

The alleged retraction contains the words, "I wish to live," which contradicts Rizal’s decision to die for his country. This he wrote in a letter to his family, saying, "I die resigned….Ah! It is better to die than to live under oppression. This he reiterates in his Ultimo Adios, "Farewell, dear Fatherland. Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life’s best."

During his last night, he was not performing the religious acts reported by Fr. Balaguer and the press. He was writing his Ultimo Adios, which reveals that he knew he was going to die. "To your health!" cries the soul that is now to take flight,: he wrote then. I die when I see color staining the sky/announcing at last the glorious day that follows this gloomy night."

Moreover, in his Mi Retiro, Rizal said, "No one can take the past away from me, that: "past"– which includes his life in Europe – where he had absorbed the learning of the West and called it his ‘faithful friend’ who would never let him down.

Ultimo Adios reiterates Rizal’s rationalist and modernist faith: "Then it matters not when you remember me no more…vibrant and clear note to your ears I shall be constantly repeating the essence (CNP bold letters) of the faith I keep."

There has never been a document which proves that Rizal was canonically married to Josephine which would have been granted had he retracted. It was enough that he dedicated the Kempis book "to my dear and unhappy wife Josephine."

Most telling of all evidences that Rizal did not retract is that he was buried in unconsecrated (Catholic ) ground.

Incontrovertible evidence for Rizal’s retraction was never produced, like an ecclesiastical request for his pardon; and neither did any friar without rank allowed to assist Rizal as claimed by some friars years after his execution.

Wenceslaus Retana writing on Rizal, "An Appraisal", says Rizal was a symbol. He was the palpitating synthesis of a race of people barbarously oppressed and he had to fall. No one, aside from the family of the convicted man, petitioned for his pardon. Not even the friars, the so-called disciples of Jesus who was all peace, kindness and charity." I was educated in a convent school. But it is only now in my late years that I have come to appreciate this part of our history. It explains a lot about how and why we have become what we are as a people.

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