His education,
from elementary to college, was from the prestigious Catholic schools of the
period. It was expected therefore, that he should have been also, a devout
Catholic. Although he was for a while, however, in later life he developed a
religious philosophy not totally in accord with the Catholic religion. Why the
transformation? It all started when Rizal first went abroad in 1882. At the age of
21, he enrolled at the Universidad Central de Madrid, working for degrees in
medicine, philosophy and literature. In Spain he found the boisterous
atmosphere of freedom: where conservatives and liberals, socialists and
anarchists, protestants and Catholics, atheists and agnostics, debated and
discussed at meetings, in cafes, on street corners, in the taverns and more
especially in the press, - without the fear of being apprehended. Rizal was
amazed and pondered an obvious question: Why did Spain forbid such freedom
in the Philippines?
Rizal’s contacts with the great thinkers, leaders, scholars, scientists and
philosophers of the progressive libertarian movement in Spain and other
European countries revolutionized his religious philosophy. He met with
Austrian Ferdinand Blumentritt who was one of the European specialists on the
Philippines. He read the radical theological writings of Felicite R. de Lamennals,
who advocated that Christian must serve the poor and fight injustices including
those perpetuated by the Catholic Church. Men like Rafael Labra, Manuel Luis
Zorilla and Francisco Pi y Margall, who struggled to reform Spain’ antiquated
feudal system, were close friends of Rizal.
Rizal did not believe that Jesus Christ was God, during his exile in Dapitan
in his letter to Fr. Pastells, he wrote: "Who died on the cross? Was it God or
man? If it was God, I do not understand how God could die: how a God
conscious of his mission could cry out in his bitter agony: 'My God, my God
why has Thou My forsaken Me’ This cry is absolutely human; it is the cry of
a man who was banking on the justice of God and worthiness of his cause,
and then found himself surrounded by every type of injustice without any
hope of salvation.., all the words of Christ on the cross reveal to us, true
enough, a man in torment and agony. But what a man!'
RELIGION: Rizal believed in religion, in his letter to his mother in 1885, he
articulated this very eloquently when he wrote: “For me religion is the holiest of
things, the purest, the most intangible, which escapes all human adulterations,
and I think I would be recreant to my duty as a rational being if I were to
prostitute my reason and admit what is absurd. I do not believe that God would
punish me if I were to try to approach Him using reason and understanding, -
his most precious gift”. Rizal opposed the perversions, abuses and hypocrisy
of the Catholic hierarchy and the colonial government that he manifested in his
two novels.
He did not intend to destroy the Catholic Church but desired its practices more
consistent with the fundamental tenets of Christianity.
REVELATION: Rizal’s fourth letter dated April 4, 1893 to Fr. Pablo Pastells, he
wrote: “I believed in the revelation but in that living revelation of Nature that
surrounds us everywhere, in that voice, potent, eternal, incessant, incorruptible,
clear, distinct, universal as the Being from whom it proceeds; in that revelation
that speaks to and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die
HEAVEN: Rizal wrote in his “Mi Ultimo Adios” his last poem. "For I go where no
slave before the oppressor bends, where faith can never kill, and God reigns
everywhere."
HELL AND PURGATORY: Rizal believed that these were invented for
exploitation of the people, by means of the sale of ribbons, scapulars, rosaries
and religious articles to the ignorant,this was also written in Dr. Viola’s “Mis
Viajes con el Dr. Rizal” (My Travels with Dr. Rizal). Purgatory was not even
written in the Bible. As regards to hell, Rizal wrote to Fr. Pastells. ”God cannot
have created me for my harm: for what harm had I done Him before being
created that He should will my damnation?”
THE GREATEST FILIPINO: Dr. Jose Rizal, the greatest Filipino of all times,
pride of the Malay race, whose writings attacking the Catholic Church and the
friars, gave spirit to the propaganda movement and paved the way to the
revolution against Spain.Rizal was the first modern Asian rational humanist,
whose participation in the liberation of the Philippines from the grip of
oppression, equaled that of Thomas Paine whose writings inspired the 1776
revolution in the United States against the British.