Rizal’s Biographer

Leon Ma. Guerrero was a faithful Catholic more than he was a faithful biographer. It is, indeed, incredible that after studying Rizal’s life and works, Guerrero had no idea what Rizal, a genius, lived and died for? Imagine a biographer asking of his subject: “Was he innocent or guilty? If innocent, then why is he a hero? If guilty how can he be a martyr? The answer is that he was neither guilty nor innocent.”
Rizal believed in the power of education to shape character and in the power of character to shape history. Innocent as a hero or guilty as a martyr had nothing to do with what Rizal precisely stood for in his struggle to liberate the minds of men and the hearts of women of his country.
In the violent opposition of mediocrity against greatness, what Albert Einstein said of Bertrand Russell, Einstein could have said exactly the same thing to our Jose Rizal: “Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”
It must have been a sin for Guerrero to write truthfully about Rizal’s real motives in his struggles against theocracy. Thus, because of Catholic writers like Guerrero, most Filipinos believe Rizal retracted and died repentant. Indeed, in this predominantly Catholic country, Filipino historians, school teachers, college professors, and newspaper columnists have all tried their best to avoid discovering Rizal’s real nature as a rare man. Only the esoteric few know the real Jose Rizal who, at the expense of his own precious life, had the spiritual courage put more philosophical beauty in the Philippines where the Catholic Church, for centuries, has only put theological horrors. Poch Suzara