Group 7: Retraction Sibal, Emilia Tacderas, Gracelyn Terre, Gena Myrtle Trinidad, Koreen Uy, Jullieanne Pearl Villar,

John Ezra Zialcita, Therese Bernal, Buena

AB-2CA3 Fernandez, Jazmine

To retract, or retraction, is to draw back or in. It is the withdrawal of a charge or a promise. The Philippine national hero Jose Rizal, since his death, has been believed by some people to have retracted, that is, from his masonry, his writings; his adamant stand against the oppression of the Filipinos, frailocracy, and every activity he has undertaken that is considered by the colonizers as a major blow to the royal name of Spain. Rizals alleged retraction from his nationalistic and anti-Clerical beliefs was said to have taken place during the twenty-four hours prior to his death on December 30, 1896 after being successfully convinced by the Jesuits. A booklet entitled The Masonization of the PhilippinesRizal and His Work was published by the Jesuits shortly thereafter to prove Rizals reconciliation with the Catholic Church.

What makes the retraction controversial? It would stain his [Rizals] clean record and subject him to the remorse of having become, at the last hour, a renegade to his own convictions, (Palma, 1949) thus questioning his right to become the Philippines National Hero.

Last 24 Hours Rizal was informed on December 29, 1896 that he was sentenced to death and would be executed the next day at seven oclock in the morning. On that same day, missionaries from the Society of Jesus, some of them his former professors from the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, were summoned by the then Archbishop of Manila, Bernardino Nozaleda, to convert the former Atenean (Guerrero, year). The timing was very much auspicious for the Jesuits for their coercion would be made easy as death neared Rizal by the minute. The following are the sequence of events before Rizals execution:

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December 29, 1986 6:00 AM Capt. Rafael Dominguez read before Rizal his death sentence. His execution was scheduled the following day. 7:00 AM Rizal was transferred to his death cell in Fort Santiago. There he received numerous visitors, including his counsel; some Spanish officials; and several priests, his former professors, with whom he supposedly discussed reason and religion. 9:00 AM Fr. Miguel Saderra Mata, S.J. and Fr. Luis Viza, S.J. were the first ones to enter the cell, whom Rizal received with great courtesy and true joy (Guerrero, 2010) and whom he asked for a copy of Kempis [The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis] and the Gospel. Fr. Viza brought with him the image of the Sacred Heart carved by Rizal during his stay in Ateneo to remind him of his former religious devotions. The priests emphasized the necessity of his conversion, to no avail. 10:00 AM Fr. Jose Vilaclara, S.J. and Fr. Vicente Balaguer, S.J. entered. They offered Rizal a medal of the Blessed Virgin Mary, something Rizal politely refused because he is not much of a Marian (Guerrero, 2010; Palma, 1949). 12:00 PM Fr. Federico Faura, S.J., director of the Manila Observatory, came next and Rizal immediately recalled how Fr. Faura prophesied that Rizal shall die on a scaffold. The priest tried to convince him to pray to the image of the Sacred Heart which he carved to ask for grace. 3:00 PM Fr. Balaguer returned to the cell and had exchanged arguments with Rizal regarding religious matters. Rizals wiles were successfully countered by the priest until he eventually said: Well, then, Father, tonight I shall ask God in earnest for the grace of faith (Palma, 1949). 10:00 PM Rizal was left to rest but was impatient to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which was denied from him unless he made a
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retraction. He asked for the formula and was given him after some time. Rizal then wrote a retraction which read:

I declare myself a Catholic and in this religion, in which I was born and educated, I wish to live and die. I retract with all my heart anything in my words, writings, publications, and conduct that has been contrary to my character as a son of the Church. I believe and profess what it teaches, and I submit to what it demands. I abominate Masonry as the enemy that it is of the Church and as a society prohibited by the same. The Diocesan Prelate, as the superior ecclesiastical authority, may make this spontaneous manifestation of mine public in order to repair the scandal that my acts may have caused and in order that God and men may forgive me. Manila, December 29, 1896. Jose Rizal.

11:30 PM

Rizal asked for pen & paper to write the letters for Blumentritt and his family. Rizal takes time to his hide his poem inside the alcohol burner. It has to be done during night rather than during daytime because he is watched very carefully. He then writes his last letter to brother Paciano.

December 30, 1986 1:30 AM Rizal knelt before the altar and recited the retraction he signed among the presence of the Jesuit fathers, the Judge Advocate, the chief of the picket, the Adjutant of the Plaza and three artillery officers. Since then, Rizal spent his time praying and meditating. 5:30 AM 6:00 AM Rizal ate breakfast with the officers. Josephine Bracken arrived and was married to Rizal by Fr. Balaguer. The newly-weds then parted forever as Rizals execution was fast approaching. 7:00 AM At Bagumabayan, the 35-year-old patriot was shot in the back by a firing squad. He hesitated, turned halfway around to face his executioners, and fell on his back to face the Philippine sun.

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The day after Rizals death, stories regarding his retraction and copies of the document he wrote and signed circulated among local newspapers but incited anything but belief among the Filipinos, especially his family and those very close to him. Not one person, however, dared to question the accounts, for fear of ending up with the same fate as Rizals. Nonetheless, the Jesuits, as already mentioned, still published a booklet in Barcelona entitled The Masonization of the PhilippinesRizal and His Work which further stressed the authenticity of the news about Rizals retraction. Criticisms on Rizal and His Work (Rizal y Su Obra) The Jesuits in Barcelona published the The Masonization of the PhilippinesRizal and His Work the day after Rizals death, a pamphlet where all the details of the case were made to appear, as if they [the Jesuits] were not very sure that the news published plainly by the newspapers at the time was sufficient (Palma, 1949). The booklets value has risen since Wenceslao Emilio Retana, a famous biographer of Rizals, deliberately quoted passages from it. Despite its popularity, the pamphlet is quite dubitable because of the following reasons: 1. The statement that Rizal immediately asked for the image of the Sacred Heart when Frs. Saderra and Viza came is viewed by Palma (1949) as a puerile coincidence, since Rizal did not believe in images. 2. Rizal could not have been persuaded by Fr. Balaguer to convert because Rizal knew Catholic dogma as much as the priests have. To think that Fr. Balaguer has convinced Rizal, whose religious convictions have long been cemented, is absurd. 3. Facts about Rizals life in the booklet were poorly investigated, and thus erroneous. Among the statements are: a. In Madrid he studied Philosophy and Letters and Medicine, finishing the latter in Germany, where he became a doctor. Rizal obtained his Licentiate in Medicine in Madrid in 1884. b. Having in London affiliated himself in the Masonry Rizal affiliated in Paris. c. He also conceived at that time [in London] the organization of the Filipino League The Filipino League or the La Liga Filipina was conceived in Hong Kong

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d. In one of his trips which he made to Paris, Rizal dated in Europe in the year 1886 his novel Noli Me Tangere The Noli was dated in Berlin. e. In 1887 he moved to Hong Kong [where] he organized the famous Filipino League [which] served as a basis for the establishment of the Supreme Revolutionary Council of the Sons of the People, or Katipunan The Liga was formed only in 1892 in the Philippines, and there is no connection between the Liga and the Katipunan. Counter-arguments against Rizals retraction Guerrero (2010) saw Rizal as a modern man in a medieval community, a non-conformist in a society where Church and State were united. Which is why it is understandable that his family and colleagues received the news about his retraction with great incredulity. Moreover, still other situations after Rizals death raised more questions among the Filipinos about the truthfulness of the Jesuits account. 1. The document of the retraction was clandestine, and no one except the authorities was able to see it. 2. The Rizal family was denied of a copy of the retraction document and even Rizal and Josephines marriage certificate. 3. Rizals burial was kept secret and his body was not immediately returned to his family. 4. No masses were said for his soul and no funeral took place. 5. He was not buried in the Catholic cemetery of Paco but in the ground, without any cross or stone to mark his grave. 6. The internment of Rizals body was written on a special page of the newspaper that contains the names of those buried by special orders of the authorities. 7. There was no moral motive for the conversion. Evidences for and against the authenticity of Rizals retraction document More questions are asked because of the Churchs major evidence of Rizals retraction, which is the document of retraction itself, written and signed by Rizal. The document was kept covert by the authorities and was lost for thirty-nine years, until it was found by Father Manuel Garcia on May 18, 1935.
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PRO In the book written by Don Gonzalo Piana, Did Doctor Rizal Die as a Christian? Reconstruction of the Last Hours of His Life An Historical Study (1920), the priests who had direct intervention in Rizals conversion gave testimonies, confirming the genuineness of the document and the narrative in the Rizal and His Work pamphlet. Dr. Henry Otley Beyer was asked by Fr. Fletcher, secretary of Archibishop to examine the document in 1950. He examined it in comparison with probably 150 other letters and documentaries in Rizals handwriting, and concluded that it was indeed authentic.

ANTI When the document was rediscovered in 1935, it was examined by Ricardo Pascual, Ph.D. whose findings showed that the document is a fraud because the signatures of the witnessesnamely Fathers Balaguer and Viza and Captain Rafael Dominquezwere signed by the same man, and that Rizals penmanship was forged. Rafael Palma pointed out that the retraction information was published late that could be unauthenticated. Moreover, the notarized documents and narratives of witnesses were of ecclesiastics and their friends will automatically not contradict the other. He even considers Luis Taviel de Andrades testimony to be a mere hearsay from the Jesuits themselves.

Leon Ma. Guerrero believed that Rizals retraction (his disavowal of Masonic and rationalist errors) was authentic; that Rizals apostolate did not give him real social consciousness and so he remained a member of the petit-bourgeois intelligentsia. Rizals nationalism was essentially rationalist, anticlerical and anti-racist, political rather than social or economic. In short, Rizal was the typical Victorian sage who believed in the dogma of reason, inevitable progress through science and commerce, and the efficacy of parliamentary representation, even up to the last moments of his life. Rizal was an evolutionist or eventualist politician, not a revolutionary intellectual. Nicolas Zafra argues that there are others who published and confirmed Rizals retraction a
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few years after his death. An example would be The Christian Death of Dr. Jose Rizal by Fr. Pio Pi In Rizals Unfading Glory, Father Cavanna says in the Preface: Rizals glory as a scholar, as a poet, as a scientist, as a patriot, as a hero, may some day fade away, as all worldly glories, earlier or later do. But his glory of having found at the hour of his death what unfortunately he lost for a time, the Truth, the Way, and the Life, that will ever be his unfading glory. Conclusion There is sufficient evidence supporting Rizals retraction that undermines those who contrast this controversial event in Rizals life. The presenters believe the genuineness of the retraction document because of the arguments that support it and also because of the confirmation from several handwriting experts that it was, indeed, Rizals penmanship used in the said document. It is a misconception that the great subversive Jose Rizal, who has been idolized by so many Filipinos even back then, was appeased and converted by the Jesuits and was compelled to give up his political ideas. Moreover, conversion does not necessarily mean that Rizal has decided to be an atheist and is invited to revert to Catholicismin fact, Schumacher (1991) has stressed that anti-Clerical does not mean being anti-Catholicbut rather to convert Rizal to what the priests believed to be good Catholicism, and that is to denounce his heretical ideas to be saved and be granted access to the Kingdom of Heaven. This shows that the retraction is a mere announcement that Rizal wanted to die as a Catholic recognized by the Church. Therefore the issue should refrain from being controversial to those who question Rizals eligibility to become a national hero because the retraction only shows that Rizal repudiated from heresies and his attribution to Masonry, but not his reprobation of his stand against the injustices and oppressions practiced by the Spanish colonial regime.

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References

Books John Schumacher, The Making of a Nation: Essays on Nineteenth-century Filipino Nationalism (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1991). Leon Ma. Guerrero, The First Filipino, (Manila: Guerrero Publishing, 2010), 461-497. Nicolas Zafra, The Historicity of Rizals Retraction (Manila: Bookmark, 1961). Rafael Palma, The Pride of the Malay Race (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1949), 324-344. Rogelio Maguidad et al, Jose Rizal the First Filipino (Quezon City: Libro Filipino Enterprises, 2004).

Online Chapter 16: Did Jose Rizal Retract? The Life and Writings of Dr. Jose Rizal, accessed February 19, 2013, http://joserizal.info/Biography/man_and_martyr/chapter16.htm Rizal the Mason, Filipinas Heritage Library, accessed February 19, 2013,

http://www.filipinaslibrary.org.ph/filipiniana-library/filipiniana/70-features/160-rizal-the-mason