Filipino national hero Jose Rizal died 113 years ago but the controversy over his alleged heresies still rages. This year, blogs and newspaper editorials continued the debate on the issue.
In one discussion forum, one post said that, if true, it is "sad ... that the cradle of Catholicism in Asia is honoring as national hero, a Catholic heretic."
Jesuit Father Jose Arcilla, a history professor and archivist who lectures to schools on Rizal, has no doubt Rizal believed in God and was not a heretic.
The
"Returning from Cuba, he wrote in his diary, 'I think God is directing my life. He is allowing me to die in my country'," Father Arcilla said. "Are those the words of a non-believer?"
Rizal, a polymath and intellectual, advocated political reforms during the Spanish colonial era and was executed by firing squad on Dec. 30, 1896, in Manila. The day is now a national holiday.
Spanish friars declared Rizal's first novel "Noli Me Tangere" (Touch me not), published in 1887, as heretical, scandalous to the Catholic
The book's characters include a young intellectual who returns home from Europe, a woman he falls in love with who turns out to be a Spanish friar's daughter, and the protagonist's father, who is killed after being falsely accused of heresy.
The controversy over Rizal's religious beliefs was further fueled by his membership of the Freemasons, a fraternity of men following a philosophy the Church regards as opposed to Christian doctrine.
A 1956 law requires all educational establishments in the Philippines to include Rizal's life, works and writings in their curricula.
The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines opposed the law, saying Rizal's ideas were often opposed to Catholic dogma and morals. They accused him of "attacks" on the possibility of miracles, the concept of purgatory, sacraments, indulgences, Church prayers, and of questioning God's omnipotence.
The bishops said he also disparaged the veneration of images and relics, devotion to the Blessed Mother and the saints, and that he questioned papal authority and other key Catholic teachings.
Father Arcilla says that despite his high profile in the Filipino psyche, Rizal remains under-appreciated as most schools focus on his novels.
To do so "is narrow," the priest says, because Rizal wrote these as
He believes the bishops' opposition failed because it lacked basis. He stressed that it is important to understand that Rizal did not reject religion but protested the colonial government's "use of religion and the Church as a cloak for their abuses."
He said many of Rizal's ideas resonate in social movements in the Church and in the world today.
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