(Editor:This
is Part II of the lecture delivered at the Chicago’s Newberry Library
on June 18, 2011. The author is a great-grand nephew of the Philippine
National Hero whose 150th birthday was marked on June 19 of this year.
Dr. Rizal was sentenced to die by musketry on Dec. 30, 1896 after a
brief mock trial by a Spanish military court in Fort Santiago, Manila.)
By Ramon G. Lopez, M.D.
L-R:
Berth Salvador, Cultural Officer, Philippine
Consulate General, Dr.
Reagan F. Romali, President of Truman College, Philippine Consul General
Leo M. Herrera-Lim and Dr. Ramon G. Lopez, direct descendant of Dr.
Jose Rizal.
“How could this be?” we ask. It COULD BE, for the circumstances and
people had connived. It COULD BE, for there was no other recourse. It
COULD BE, for the moth had burned its wings! Twenty-four years after
the garroting of the Filipino clerics, Fathers Jose Burgos, Mariano
Gomez, and Jacinto Zamora, the pogrom and intimidation had to continue.
It had to continue for the dying Empire and frailocracy had now sensed
its own death. It had to continue, for it wanted to display its final
domination of a reawakened people. However, it would not be completely
so! The man they had just martyred was a man whose politics and faith
were unshakeable and timeless. As we know, and as History recounts, it
also projects.
To paraphrase the words of Dr. Rafael Palma the great Philippine
scholar, patriot, and former President of the University of the
Philippines regarding the trial of Dr. Jose Rizal, “the document
obtained under moral duress and spiritual threats has very little value
before the tribunal of history.” Dr. Rafael Palma, a respected jurist
of his time, was an author on the life of our hero and had studied the
trial of Dr. Jose Rizal meticulously. Of this he says in his book The
Pride of the Malay Race about Dr. Jose Rizal, “His defense before the
court martial is resplendent for its moderation and serenity in spite of
the abusive and vexatious manner in which the fiscal had treated him.”
For in man’s own tribunal, the tribunal and trial that condemned Dr.
Jose Rizal to die was a sham; his execution, a foregone conclusion.
A
portrait of Jose Rizal as a Mason. His membership in the fraternity had
caused his excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. His
retraction is a subject of controversy.
It is common historical knowledge that Ms. Josephine Bracken lived
with Dr. Jose Rizal for three of the four years he was exiled in
Dapitan. He truly loved her. They had desired a canonical marriage but
were presented with a pre-condition retraction of Rizal’s
anti-ecclesiastical writings and beliefs. As we may know, he was never
anti-God or anti-Church. He was anti-cleric to those who abused their
mission and hid behind their pretentious cloak of religiosity. He knew
there were those who practiced religion but did not worship God.
Neither the retraction nor the marriage occurred. He and Josephine were
parents to a son, though he sadly passed. We know that Dr. Jose Rizal
had immortalized Josephine Bracken in his unsigned and untitled poem
which we now refer to as his “Ultimo Adios”: “Adios, dulce extranjera mi
amiga, mi alegria…” As Ambeth R. Ocampo, Director of the Philippine
Historical Institute quotes, “To accept Rizal as having married Bracken
is to accept his alleged retraction of religious error.” From Austin
Coates, British author and historian: “Before God, he (Dr. Rizal) had
nothing to retract.” And from Dr. Jose Rizal himself, I quote: “I go
where there are no slaves, no hangmen, no oppressors… where faith does
not slay… where He who reigns is God.”
Fraudulent Premise
From 1892 to 1896, during his period of exile in Dapitan, the Catholic
Church attempted to redirect his beliefs regarding religious faith,
albeit unsuccessfully. A succession of visits from Fathers Obach,
Vilaclara, and Sanchez did not find his convictions wanting. He had
decided to remain ecclesiastically unwed, rather than recant his alleged
“religious errors.” Now, there seems to be a “disconnect”, or even a
divide among historians as to whether Dr. Jose Rizal had abjured his
apparent errant religious ways as claimed by the friars and the
Jesuits. Since a retraction of alleged “religious errors” would have
begotten a marriage to Ms. Josephine Bracken, let us look for evidence
that will prove this premise fraudulent. Austin Coates’ book entitled
Rizal – Philippine Nationalist and Martyr gives many compelling facts as
borne out from his own personal investigation, and with numerous
interviews of the Rizal family. To wit:
1.Fr. Vicente Balaguer, S. J., claimed that he performed the
canonical marriage between 6:00 – 6:15 AM of December 30, 1896 in the
presence of one of the Rizal sisters. The Rizal family denied that any
of the Rizal sisters were there that fateful morning. Dr. Jose Rizal
was martyred at 7:03 AM.
2. Nobody had reported seeing Ms. Josephine Bracken in the vicinity of Fort Santiago in the morning of the execution.
3. Considering the time it would take for the three priests (Fr. Jose
Vilaclara, Fr. Estanislao March, and Fr. Vicente Balaguer) to negotiate
the expanse of the walk to give spiritual care to the condemned Dr.
Jose Rizal, why is it that only Fr. Balaguer could “describe” a
wedding? Furthermore, where were Fr. Vilaclara and Fr. March to
corroborate the occurrence of a marriage ceremony? Or was there really
even one at all?
4. In Josephine Bracken’s matrimony to Vicente Abad, the Church
Register of Marriages kept at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Hong Kong
made no reference that Josephine was a “Rizal” by marriage, or that she
was the widow of Dr. Jose Rizal.
5. In the legal register of Hong Kong, Josephine used the last name “Bracken” instead of “Rizal” to be married to Vicente Abad.
6. In Josephine Bracken’s litigation versus Jose Maria Basa for the
possession of Dr. Jose Rizal’s valuable library, a certification from
the British Consulate from Manila stating that she was indeed Rizal’s
widow would have bolstered her claim. She did not pursue this. Why
not?
7. In 1960, inquiry at the Cardinal-Bishopric of Manila for
evidentiary proof of a Rizal-Bracken marriage was not fruitful, or
possibly, the issue was simply ignored by the religious. Likewise, we
ask the question, “Why?”
“Unconfessed” Martyrdom”
From the dark days of exile in Dapitan, to the even darker days of
imprisonment at Fort Santiago, the Catholic Church had demanded from Dr.
Jose Rizal a retraction before a canonical marriage could be
performed. In this Inquisition-like setting of the Spanish regime, it
was always proclaimed that “the Indio always retracted”, as he walked to
his execution. Austin Coates states in his book: “The Spaniards
publish the same thing about everyone who is shot… Besides, nobody has
ever seen this written declaration in spite of the fact that a number of
people would want to see it…. It is (always) in the hands of the
Archbishop.” I say that if there was no marriage, there could have not
been a retraction, and Dr. Jose Rizal met his martyrdom “un-confessed”:
1. Indeed, at the Paco Cemetery, the name of Dr. Jose Rizal was
listed among those who died impenitent. The entry made in the book of
burials at the cemetery where Rizal was buried was not made on the page
for those buried on December 30, 1896 (where there were as many as six
entries), but on a special page, as ordered by the authorities. Thus,
Dr. Jose Rizal was entered on a page between a man who burned to death,
and another who died by suicide – persons considered “un-confessed” and
without spiritual aid at the time of death.
2. Father Estanislao March, S.J., and Fr. Jose Vilaclara, S.J.
(who had accompanied Dr. Jose Rizal to the execution site) could have
ordered a Christian burial, but they did not. They must have known that
no retraction was made. Dr. Jose Rizal was laid to earth bare, without
a sack, without a coffin. This was the onus of the “un-confessed.”
3. One must also remember that Dr. Jose Rizal wrote a short and
final note to his parents dated December 30, 1896 at 6:00 in the
morning, with no mention of an occurred or intended retraction and/or
marriage. A message with that important information would have been of
great consolation to Dona Teodora Alonso and to Don Francisco Mercado,
whom he loved and respected dearly.
4. Despite numerous immediate supplications from the Rizal family
after the execution, no letter of retraction could be produced.
5. The Rizal family was informed by the church that approximately
nine to eleven days after the execution, a mass for the deceased would
be said, after which the letter of retraction would be shown the
family. Though the family was in attendance, the mass was never
celebrated and no letter of retraction was shown. They were told that
the letter had been sent to the Archbishop’s palace, and that the family
would not be able to see it.
6. The Jesuits themselves (who had a special liking for their former
student) did not celebrate any mass for his soul, nor did they hold any
funerary rites over his body. I take this as a repudiation of the
Jesuits against the friars, loudly hinting to the Filipino people that
their esteemed pupil did not abjure!
7. The apparent “discovery” of an obviously forged autobiography of
Josephine Bracken claiming marriage to Dr. Jose Rizal, showed a
handwriting that bore no resemblance to Josephine’s and had glaring
errors in syntax, which revealed that the perpetrating author’s primary
language was Spanish (not Josephine’s original language), thus proving
that the document was manufactured and disingenuous.
8. Confession in August, 1901 of master forger Roman Roque that
earlier in the year, he was employed by the friars to make several
copies of a retraction letter.
9. In 1962, authors Ildefonso T. Runes and Mamerto M. Buenafe
in their book Forgery of the Rizal Retraction and Josephine’s
Autobiography, made an exposé of six different articles and books that
purportedly presented Dr. Jose Rizal’s “document of retraction” as
copied from the so-called “original” testament of retraction.
Intriguingly enough, even to this day, the claimed “original” document
from which the facsimiles have arisen have not been seen by anybody.
Blatant in these six different presentations were differing dates and
notes that had been doctored, traced-over, and altered, when these
facsimiles were supposed to have come from the same “original”
document! This book of Runes and Buenafe was published by the
Pro-Patria Publishers of Manila. The book is extant but unfortunately,
out of print.
Though the issue of “Retraction” remains contentious for some people,
it is my personal opinion that there is no controversy; that Dr. Jose
Rizal did not make any recantation of his writings and beliefs. The
arguments to the contrary made by his detractors are all smoke screen
and “retreads” of the dubious accounts of the sycophantic Father
Balaguer and his gullible minions. Let us not allow for the sands of
time to cover the blunder of this ignoble and impious event. Let not
the conspiracy of silence keep us chained to this fraudulent claim. As
had been vigorously proposed then, and again now, let the document of
retraction be examined by a panel of the world’s experts in
hand-writing, and let a pronouncement be made. Let this hidden document
come to the eyes of the public, for they have the greatest of rights to
see, and to judge, and to know what is truthful.
When this comes to pass… in this 21st century, in this age of an
“evidence-based” society that demands transparency and full-disclosure,
it can be stated that with the now enlightened and reformed Catholicism,
and in the spirit of Vatican II, if Pope John Paul II can apologize to
the Jewish people for the millennia of misdeeds by the Church, if Pope
Benedict XVI can, in Australia at the 2008 World Youth Congress,
apologize to the victims of pedophilia and other ecclesiastical sexual
abuses, then it should not be beyond the Catholic Church to NOW admit
the pious fraud it had committed in saying that Dr. Jose Rizal had
abjured his writings and beliefs, when all evidences point to the fact
that he did not!
