Rizal Law
Encyclopedia
Republic Act No. 1425, known as the Rizal Law, mandates all educational institutions in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

 to offer courses about José Rizal
José Rizal
José Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda , was a Filipino polymath, patriot and the most prominent advocate for reform in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era. He is regarded as the foremost Filipino patriot and is listed as one of the national heroes of the Philippines by...

. The full name of the law is An Act to Include in the Curricula of All Public and Private Schools, Colleges and Universities Courses On the Life, Works and Writings of Jose Rizal
José Rizal
José Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda , was a Filipino polymath, patriot and the most prominent advocate for reform in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era. He is regarded as the foremost Filipino patriot and is listed as one of the national heroes of the Philippines by...

, Particularly His Novels Noli Me Tangere
Noli Me Tangere (novel)
Noli Me Tangere is a novel by Filipino polymath José Rizal and first published in 1887 in Berlin, Germany. Early English translations used titles like An Eagle Flight and The Social Cancer, but more recent translations have been published using the original Latin title.Though originally written in...

 and El Filibusterismo
El filibusterismo
El filibusterismo , also known by its English alternate title The Reign of Greed, is the second novel written by Philippine national hero José Rizal. It is the sequel to Noli Me Tangere and like the first book, was written in Spanish. It was first published in 1891 in Ghent, Belgium...

, Authorizing the Printing and Distribution Thereof, and for Other Purposes
. The measure was strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines due to the anti-clerical themes in Noli Me Tangere
Noli Me Tangere (novel)
Noli Me Tangere is a novel by Filipino polymath José Rizal and first published in 1887 in Berlin, Germany. Early English translations used titles like An Eagle Flight and The Social Cancer, but more recent translations have been published using the original Latin title.Though originally written in...

and El Filibusterismo
El filibusterismo
El filibusterismo , also known by its English alternate title The Reign of Greed, is the second novel written by Philippine national hero José Rizal. It is the sequel to Noli Me Tangere and like the first book, was written in Spanish. It was first published in 1891 in Ghent, Belgium...

.

History

Senator Claro M. Recto
Claro M. Recto
Claro Mayo Recto, Jr. , was a Filipino politician, jurist, poet and one of the foremost statesmen of his generation...

 was the main proponent of the then Rizal Bill. He sought to sponsor the bill at Congress. However, this was met with stiff opposition from the Catholic Church. During the 1955 Senate election, the church charged Recto with being a communist and an anti-Catholic. After Recto's election, the Church continued to oppose the bill mandating the reading of Rizal's novels Noli Me Tangere
Noli Me Tangere (novel)
Noli Me Tangere is a novel by Filipino polymath José Rizal and first published in 1887 in Berlin, Germany. Early English translations used titles like An Eagle Flight and The Social Cancer, but more recent translations have been published using the original Latin title.Though originally written in...

and El Filibusterismo
El filibusterismo
El filibusterismo , also known by its English alternate title The Reign of Greed, is the second novel written by Philippine national hero José Rizal. It is the sequel to Noli Me Tangere and like the first book, was written in Spanish. It was first published in 1891 in Ghent, Belgium...

, claiming it would violate freedom of conscience and religion
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...

.

In the campaign to oppose the Rizal bill, the Catholic Church urged its adherents to write to their congressmen and senators showing their opposition to the bill; later, it organized symposiums. In one of these symposiums, Fr. Jesus Cavanna argued that the novels belonged to the past and that teaching them would misrepresent current conditions. Radio commentator Jesus Paredes also said that Catholics had the right to refuse to read them as it would "endanger their salvation".

Groups such as Catholic Action of the Philippines, the Congregation of the Mission, the Knights of Columbus
Knights of Columbus
The Knights of Columbus is the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization. Founded in the United States in 1882, it is named in honor of Christopher Columbus....

, and the Catholic Teachers Guild organized opposition to the bill; they were countered by Veteranos de la Revolucion (Spirit of 1896), Alagad in Rizal, the Freemasons, and the Knights of Rizal
Knights of Rizal
The Order of the Knights of Rizal is a fraternal organization created to honor and uphold the ideals of Philippine national hero Jose Rizal. Established on December 30, 1911 the organization was granted a legislative charter by the President of the Philippines as a civic and patriotic organization...

. The Senate Committee on Education sponsored a bill co-written by both Jose P. Laurel
Jose P. Laurel
José Paciano Laurel y García was the president of the Republic of the Philippines, a Japanese-sponsored administration during World War II, from 1943 to 1945...

 and Recto, with the only opposition coming from Francisco Soc Rodrigo
Francisco Soc Rodrigo
Francisco Soc Rodrigo was a Senator of the Third Congress , Fourth Congress , Fifth Congress , and Sixth Congress of the Republic of the Philippines...

, Mariano Jesús Cuenco
Mariano Jesús Cuenco
Mariano Jesús Diosomito Cuenco was a Filipino Cebuano politician and writer.-Early life:He was born in Carmen, Cebu on January 16, 1888, to Mariano Albao Cuenco and Remedios López Diosomito. He studied at the Colegio de San Carlos of Cebu, where he graduated in 1904 with a degree in Bachelor of...

, and Decoroso Rosales.

The Archbishop of Manila, Rufino Santos, protested in a pastoral letter
Pastoral letter
A Pastoral letter, often called simply a pastoral, is an open letter addressed by a bishop to the clergy or laity of his diocese, or to both, containing either general admonition, instruction or consolation, or directions for behaviour in particular circumstances...

 that Catholic students would be affected if compulsory reading of the unexpurgated version were pushed through. Arsenio Lacson
Arsenio Lacson
Arsenio H. Lacson was a Filipino journalist and politician who gained widespread attention as Mayor of Manila from 1952 to 1962. An active executive likened by Time and The New York Times to New York's Fiorello La Guardia, he was the first Manila mayor to be reelected to three terms...

, Manila's mayor, who supported the bill, walked out of Mass when the priest read a circular from the archbishop denouncing the bill.

Rizal, according to Cuenco
Mariano Jesús Cuenco
Mariano Jesús Diosomito Cuenco was a Filipino Cebuano politician and writer.-Early life:He was born in Carmen, Cebu on January 16, 1888, to Mariano Albao Cuenco and Remedios López Diosomito. He studied at the Colegio de San Carlos of Cebu, where he graduated in 1904 with a degree in Bachelor of...

, "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 touched on Rizal's denial of the existence of purgatory
Purgatory
Purgatory is the condition or process of purification or temporary punishment in which, it is believed, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven...

, as it was not found in the Bible, and that Moses and Jesus Christ did not mention its existence; Cuenco concluded that a "majority of the Members of this Chamber, if not all [including] our good friend, the gentleman from Sulu" believed in purgatory. The senator from Sulu, Domocao Alonto, attacked Filipinos who proclaimed Rizal as "their national hero but seemed to despise what he had written", saying that the Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

ns used Rizal's books as their Bible on their independence movement; Pedro López
Pedro López
Pedro Alonso López is a Colombian-born confessed serial killer, accused of raping and killing more than 300 girls across South America...

, who hails from Cebu, Cuenco's province, in his support for the bill, reasoned out that it was in their province the independence movement started, when Lapu-Lapu
Lapu-Lapu
Lapu-Lapu was the ruler of Mactan, an island in the Visayas, Philippines, who is known as the first native of the archipelago to have resisted the Spanish colonization...

 fought
Battle of Mactan
The Battle of Mactan was fought in the Philippines on April 27, 1521. The warriors of Lapu-Lapu, a native chieftain of Mactan Island, defeated Spanish forces under the command of Ferdinand Magellan, who was killed in the battle.- Background :...

 Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer. He was born in Sabrosa, in northern Portugal, and served King Charles I of Spain in search of a westward route to the "Spice Islands" ....

.

Outside the Senate, the Catholic schools threatened to close down if the bill was passed; Recto countered that if that happened, the schools would be nationalized. Recto did not believe the threat, stating that the schools were too profitable to be closed. The schools gave up the threat, but threatened to "punish" legislators in favor of the law in future elections. A compromise was suggested, to use the expurgated version; Recto, who had supported the required reading of the unexpurgated version, declared: "The people who would eliminate the books of Rizal from the schools would blot out from our minds the memory of the national hero. This is not a fight against Recto but a fight against Rizal," adding that since Rizal is dead, they are attempting to suppress his memory.

On May 12, 1956, a compromise inserted by Committee on Education chairman Laurel that accommodated the objections of the Catholic Church was approved unanimously. The bill specified that only college (university) students would have the option of reading unexpurgated versions of clerically-contested reading material, such as Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. The bill was enacted on June 12, 1956, Flag Day.

Content

Section 1 mandated that the students were to read the novels as they were written in Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, although a provision ordered that the Board of National Education create rules on how these should be applied. The last two sections were focused on making Rizal's works accessible to the general public: the second section mandated the schools to have "an adequate number" of copies in their libraries, while the third ordered the board to publish the works in major Philippine languages
Philippine languages
The Philippine languages are a 1991 proposal by Robert Blust that all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi—except Sama–Bajaw and a few languages of Palawan—form a subfamily of Austronesian languages...

.

Aftermath

After the bill was enacted into law, there were no recorded instances of students applying for exemption from reading the novels, and no known procedure for such exemptions. In 1994, President Fidel V. Ramos
Fidel V. Ramos
Fidel "Eddie" Valdez Ramos , popularly known as FVR, was the 12th President of the Philippines from 1992 to 1998. During his six years in office, Ramos was widely credited and admired by many for revitalizing and renewing international confidence in the Philippine economy.Prior to his election as...

 ordered the Department of Education, Culture and Sports to fully implement the law as there had been reports that it has still not been fully implemented.

The debate during the enactment of the Rizal Law has been compared to the Reproductive Health bill (RH bill) debate of 2011. Akbayan representative Kaka Bag-ao
Kaka Bag-ao
Arlene "Kaka" J. Bag-ao is a human rights lawyer and advocate, and the second representative of Akbayan Party in the 15th Congress of the Philippines.- Education :...

, one of the proponents of the RH bill, said, quoting the Catholic hierarchy, that "More than 50 years ago, they said the Rizal Law violates the Catholic's right to conscience and religion, interestingly, the same line of reasoning they use to oppose the RH bill."

External links

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