Rizal’s ‘Noli’
Even if Dr. Jose P. Rizal was in Europe, his novel “Noli Me Tangere” was already read by the people. It was branded as anti-clerical for it exposed the bad deeds of the friars in the country.
I would like to present both sides of the controversy. The “Noli” is anticlerical and is also pro-clerical, but in the end is not anti-clerical.
After five years in Europe, Rizal returned to the Philippines in August 1887 and practiced medicine in his hometown in Calamba, Laguna. But his enemies, who resented his novel, persecuted him and even threatened to kill him.
One day Rizal received a letter from Governor General Emilio Terrero requesting him to come to the Malacañang Palace. his enemies had whispered to the ears of the Governor General that his novel had subversive ideas. He went to the Governor General and denied the allegations.
The Governor General did not believe him and asked for a copy of the book. He then assigned Fr. Rector Gregorio Echevarria of the University of Santo Tomas to examine the novel.
A committee composed of Dominican friars was formed and it stated that the “Noli” was “heretical, impious, and scandalous of the religious order” and was also “anti-patriotic, subversive of public order and injurious to the government of Spain and its functions in the Philippine Islands in the political order.”
The Fr. Rector returned the book to the Governor General with the supposed impieties in it underlined.
Another Augustinian, Fr. Jose Rodriquez, prior of Guadalupe, published a series of eight pamphlets under the general headings, “Cuestiones the Sumo Interes” (“Questions of Supreme Interest”) to blast the “Noli.” Here are some of the allegations: a) Rizal wrote in the “Noli” that the Spanish friars grabbed lands from the natives.
b) He wrote that Spanish friars were collecting big amounts for donation in administering the sacrament.
c) He exposed how the natives suffered from persecution and torture.
d) He showed how the Spanish friars interfered with the problems of the natives especially that of Maria Clara.
e) He wrote that the Spanish friars were collecting big percentage of taxes either on goods or not.
But the “Noli” had its gallant defenders. Marcelo H. del Pilar, Dr. Antonio Ma. Regidor, Graciano Lopes Jaena, Mariano Ponce and other Filipino reformist in foreign lands rushed to uphold the truths inm the “Noli.” Fr. Sanchez, Rizal’s favorite teacher at the Ateneo, defended and praised it in public.
A brilliant defense of the “Noli” came from an unexpected source. Rev. Fr. Vicente Garcia, a Filipino Catholic priest, scholar and resident of Singapore blasted, under the pen name Justo Residerio Magalang, the arguments of Fr. Rodriguez as follows:
a) Rizal cannot be an ignorant man, as Fr. Rodriguez alleged, because he was a graduate of Spanish universities and was a recipient of scholastic honors.
b) Rizal does not attack the church and the state. He attacked the bad Spanish officials and not Spain, and the bad and corrupt friars and not the church in his book.
c) Fr. Rodriguez said that those who read the “Noli” commited a mortal sin, since he (Fr. Rodriguez) had read the novel, therefore, he also commited a mortal sin.
Indeed, Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere” is not an anti-clerical novel. It was just an expose of the abuses done by the Dominican and Augustinian friars. The book can never be anti-clerical because it did not crticize all the friars.
If the novel was anti-clerical, why would the Jesuit friars find it to be not anti-clerical but as merely an attack on abusive friars?
The controversy was a product of the prejudices on Rizal by the Dominicans and a product of the dispute between the Dominican friars and the Jesuit friars, as the Dominicans knew that Rizal was trained as a Jesuit man.
The purpose of Dr. Jose P. Rizal in writing “Noli Me Tangere” was purely to expose the bad deeds of some friars and of some government officials at that time.
“Noli Me Tangere” is not an anticleric but a pro cleric book.--