Open Letter to the Knights of Rizal

Open Letter to the Knights of Rizal As the Knights of Rizal, you people should have already settled the issue of the Rizal retraction scandal. The shameful damaging controversy has been going on for more than 111 years now. Rizal was condemned to death as an infidel. He was framed with the crime of rebellion to kill him for brilliantly attacking the Catholic establishment as even the 2005 published Opus Dei book admits. Down Through the years, you Knights of Rizal, historians, biographers, and even a famous lady columnist wrote that it does not matter whether Rizal retracted or not because it is a non-issue. I ask: are you people really that frightened of the truth? And to think that some of you are lawyers by profession. You were trained in the art of cross-examination precisely to ferret out the truth. When has the truth ever been a non-issue in human tragedy? We Filipinos have yet to acknowledge that our hero, Rizal, died truthful to his principles and humanitarian ideals. Indeed, he met his death intellectually sober and not drunk with religious lies. Clearly, the Catholic church in authority found it necessary to put Rizal to death. After all, it is easier to destroy the reputation of a dead man than it is to destroy his truthful writings, especially if he remains alive doing more truthful writings. Rizal advocated the rational way of life and he therefore got to be the notorious enemy of Catholicism. Rizal wanted us to grow up and to stop living in fear and in guilt. Moreover, to stop wasting our time falling on our knees praying daily to a Supreme Being out there to give us this day our daily bread and to lead us not into temptation down here. The Catholic could never allow Rizal’s teachings to revolutionize the Filipino way of thinking: it is always better to think than it is to believe. Unfortunately, faith condemns people not to think. And sadly, with faith, millions believe that Rizal died as a penitent Catholic totally rejecting Rizal‘s message: “Be careful, choose well, for this world is full of deceits and deceivers.” And to think that after he was executed Rizal was not even granted a Catholic burial. It only proves that the Rizal retraction story was pure gimcrackery. It was concocted by the priesthood industry to protect the Catholic church with its vested interest in human misery. In this 21st century, we poor Filipinos are still searching for our identity and prosperity and social sanity which Rizal struggled and gave his precious life for. Oh, you Knights of Rizal, wake up! Rizal is still a vague hero to millions of Filipinos! Only the few know Rizal as a brilliant thinker who was executed for being too brilliant a thinker who catered not to the authority of the church, but served instead his people and the future welfare of his own country! Indeed, thanks to the courage of great thinkers in the stature of a Rizal, the Catholic church today is tearing itself apart externally as it is collapsing internally. I accuse you Knights of Rizal of both errancy and complicity in the second assassination of Rizal’s character and reputation. It is worthless to ignore those who maliciously invented Rizal’s retraction document hours before he was executed. It is more crucial to defend Rizal’s loyalty to veracity, profound sense of common human decency, and unquestionable level of scientific honesty. If we, the Filipino people, continue to suffer under the failure of our social values and religious beliefs, it is simply due to the historical success of Catholicism in the Philippines. Indeed, as products of our Catholic schools, colleges, and universities we have yet to be taught how to emulate our great hero - the rare and brave thinking Filipino that he was - who struggled against those made wealth, power, and glory selling nothing but the gospel of sacred lies and biblical falsehoods in this country since the 16th century. Gentlemen, our chief hero was put to death for being humanistic, scientific, and a heretic. Indeed, the same Rizal, the sane and rational man that he was, with dignity and self-respect - refused to fall on his knees in blind obedience to anything fantastic be it ecclesiastic, apostolic, pontific, or even theologic. Yours in Rizal, Poch Suzara