Note 5 — Chapter IV · VOICES OF PROPHECY

While he was yet in the university, Rizal came into contact with another influence that affected both his career and the story of his country. He became a freemason. Upon all secret societies, but especially upon the freemasons, the governing class in the Philippines had scowled implacably; the friars and the church generally being still more hostile. The governing class in its jumpy way believed that any kind of secret organization must signify treason; the Civil Guards objected because here were keyholes at which one could not watch; the friars thought freemasonry threatened the economic welfare of the church. By these, Rizal’s religious convictions were gravely doubted, but need not have been since they were easily ascertained. He was of a broad and sweet faith and a charitable practice, cherishing a universal tolerance refreshing to encounter, but he was in the substance of his belief a loyal Catholic. In his father’s house he had been accustomed to hear religious questions discussed without the least restraint;5 within those walls Francisco Mercado would have freedom of speech if it existed nowhere else in Filipinas. From such discussions he had learned that religion was a matter about which men would differ widely and yet without just reproach; the independent, courageous, and conscientious man would decide for himself. When he came to understand the subjugation of his country and the part played in that great wrong by the monastic orders his faith in the organized church as the custodian of men’s minds and thinkings faded out, but not his faith in the essentials of the Christian religion, from which he seems never to have wandered.