The intense debate on the Rizal Law

Philippine Daily Inquirer

31 Dec 2010
Raul C. Pangalangan

SOME COLLEGE students may not be aware of it, but the Rizal course they are taking is
actually required by law—and wow, these kids couldn’t have imagined how much debate that
law generated in its time. The Rizal Law was passed in June 1956.
The language of the law itself already shows the signs of controversy: “Section 1. Courses in the
life, works and writings of Jose Rizal … shall be [taught] in all schools … public or private,
Provided, That in collegiate courses, the original or unexpurgated editions of the Noli Me
Tangere and El Filibusterismo or their English translation shall be used as basic texts.”
Read the rest of Section 1: Students may be “exempt[ed] for reasons of religious belief stated in
a sworn statement, from the requirement [to read the unexpurgated editions] but not from taking
the course [itself].”
Section 2 is actually rather cryptic: “It shall be obligatory on all schools, colleges and
universities to keep in their libraries … copies of the original and unexpurgated editions of the
[Noli and Fili] or their translations in English … shall be included in the list of approved books
for required reading in all public or private schools ….”
Now let us ask ourselves: Why this obsession with the “original or unexpurgated editions”?
What might otherwise be purged in the non-original editions? And why allow the original
version only for college students? Why insulate high school students from the unexpurgated
edition and restrict them to the innocuous version?
And why fine-tune further to allow the equivalent of a “conscientious objector” status vis-àvis
the reading of a novel? Can you imagine that? Conscientious objectors usually object to going to
war! How does reading a novel imperil one’s religious belief, on the same plane as risking life
and limb in combat for an unjust cause?
Finally about the mysterious Section 2. Does it mean that schools would subvert the law simply
by not stocking Rizal’s novels in their library shelves?
The debate over the Rizal bill was a show- down between the secular nationalists led by the two
senators from Batangas, Claro M. Recto and Jose P. Laurel, and those who felt that Rizal’s
writings undermined the Catholic Church, consisting of Francisco Rodrigo, Mariano J. Cuenco
and Decoroso Rosales. The law aimed to revive patriotism by promoting the teachings of the
national hero.
Quoting from Cuenco’s speech on the floor: Rizal “attack[ed] dogmas, beliefs and practices of
the Church. The assertion that Rizal limited himself to castigating undeserving priests and
refrained from criticizing, ridiculing or putting in doubt dogmas of the Catholic Church, is
absolutely gratuitous and misleading.”
Cuenco then proceeded to quote verbatim passages where Rizal heaped “scorn” upon Catholic
teaching on miracles, the sacraments, indulgences, the veneration of images. An example: “Rizal
[says] that the idea of Purgatory ‘does not exist in the Old Testament or in the Gospels; that
neither Moses nor Christ made the slightest mention of it; and that the early Christians did not
believe in Purgatory.’”

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I’m no expert on religion and can’t tell who is right but, as a constitutional law teacher, I’m most
troubled by Cuenco’s next argument: “majority of the Members of this Chamber, if not all
[including] our good friend, the gentleman from Sulu” believe in Purgatory. So much for the
separation of Church and State.
The first irony for me personally is that I first studied the “Noli” and “Fili” in high school in my
Filipino class, but read it in English since I read faster that way. Just imagine: The masterpieces
by the national hero, written in Spanish, read in English and taught in Filipino—and all this to
promote Filipino nationalism.
The second is that during the voting in Congress, the initial fence-sitters who eventually voted
for the Rizal Law typically would: one, affirm their nationalism and admiration for Rizal; two,
claim to be faithful to the Church and to their Catholic constituents; and three, say that the bill
was a worthy compromise because it grants religious exemptions and limits the unexpurgated
version to the college level. In other words, these were the saving clauses, so to speak, both
politically (as in face-saving) and constitutionally.
The third is that the Rizal Law prevailed despite the pragmatic counter-offer that it was possible
to advance nationalism without Rizal’s anti-clerical baggage, through edited anthologies of Rizal
and of other heroes too. In other words, there were practical reasons to drop it altogether, but the
principled reason for keeping it won the day. The Rizal Law was a political triumph of secular
nationalism.
Finally, perhaps what really won the day was Jose Rizal the symbol. Not a single critic of the
Rizal Law (at least based on the Congressional Records) dared impugn Rizal’s bona fides as a
patriot. The demonization of Rizal would have to wait for the revisionist historians of the 1960s
who would disparage him as the bourgeois compromiser. That was the state of the debate when I
myself enrolled for the Rizal course in the late 1970s, and I’m glad to see that Rizal has
weathered the herd thinking of that season with his stature undiminished.
I close the year with Rizal’s own words: “[W]hile we see our own countrymen in private life …
hear roaring the voice of conscience [yet] in public life keep silent, to make a chorus with him
who abuses to mock the abused; while we see them … praising the most iniquitous deeds with
forced smiles, begging with their eyes for a portion of the booty, why give them freedom? …
Why independence if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?”