Happy 150th Birtday Kuyang Pepe!

Rizal was made a Master Mason on November 15, 1890 at Logia Solidaridad 53 in Madrid, Spain. He affiliated with a lodge under the jurisdiction of Grand Orient of France on October 14, 1891, and was made honorary Worshipful Master of Nilad Lodge No. 144 in 1892. There he delivered a lecture entitled “La Masoneria”. Influenced by Miguel Morayta, a history professor at the Universidad de Madrid, Rizal joined Masonry, under the Gran Oriente de Español, adopting the Masonic name, Dimasalang. He was automatically excommunicated, expelled from the Catholic Church, a fate decreed for all Catholics becoming Masons since 1738 and reaffirmed by the CBCP in 1990. Rizal had plenty of illustrious company including Andres Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini, Ladislao Diwa, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Juan Luna, Deodato Arellano, Graciano Lopez-Jaena, H. Pardo de Tavera, and so many others in the Propaganda Movement and La Liga Filipina.
It was a Masonic trader, Jose Ramos, who first smuggled copies of the ”Noli Me Tangere” into Manila.

In 1912, Rizal’s family rejected a petition from the Jesuits to rebury their famous pupil. Instead, that honor was accorded to the Masons, led by Timoteo Paez, who, in full regalia, carried Rizal’s remains in a long procession to the Masonic Temple in Tondo for funeral rites, before final interment at the Luneta in December 1912.

The true meaning of his life has been obscured by his enemies, who have claimed that in the end, he abjured Masonry and returned to the Faith. If he did, why was he martyred? Luckily, most of his written work (50 volumes!) has been available, since his birth centenary in 1961, despite strident opposition from the Catholic Church. In this way, Rizal may still get the final word. The tragedy is, most Filipinos have not read Rizal at all, being mainly exposed to seriously flawed films about him. (These much-awarded movies portray him at his execution, clutching rosary beads around his neck, a sop thrown in to mollify Church hierarchy.)

…Even if he had, hypothetically, signed some made-up retraction document, to save his family from persecution and to marry Josephine Bracken, the letters prove he could not have done so sincerely. Freed from Catholic indoctrination by wide exposure to many cultures and religions, the heart and mind that one encounters in the epistolary just could not have made a genuine retraction, for he was, irreversibly, a global citizen, an ecumenical man.

Rizal believed that you can be a good and moral person without believing in a specific supernatural deity or purported representatives on earth. Of course, faith can also lead to a strong moral conscience, but religion is not the only route to virtue. Participation in an organized religion may be a sufficient impetus to a virtuous life, as is fear of eternal damnation, but it is not a necessary condition.

Rizal upheld democratic tolerance and ecumenism. He rejected dogmatism and the towering vanity of a “one true faith.” In so doing he found true freedom and understood the deepest meaning of democracy before it was born in his country.

That is why he chose to die an apostate, excommunicated from the Catholic Church, rather than be a traitor to himself and the future of humanity.

footnote:
http://samuel.kusangpalo.com/