his
Masonic membership was in London when in visiting St. John's Lodge,
Scotch Constitution, in Hongkong in November of 1891, since which
date he had not been in London, he registered as from "Temple du
honneur de les amis francais," an old-established Paris lodge.

Also the sister Lucia, who was said to have been a witness of the
marriage, is not positive that it occurred, having only seen the
priest at the altar in his vestments. The record of the marriage
has been stated to be in the Manila Cathedral, but it is not there,
and as the Jesuit in officiating would have been representing the
military chaplain, the entry should have been in the Fort register,
now in Madrid. Rizal's burial, too, does not indicate that he died
in the faith, yet it with the marriage has been used as an argument
for proving that the retraction must have been made.

The retraction itself appears in two versions, with slight
differences. No one outside the Spanish faction has ever seen
the original, though the family nearly got into trouble by their
persistence in trying to get sight of it after its first publication.

The foregoing might suggest some disbelief, but in fact they are only
proofs of the remarks already made about the Spanish carelessness in
details and liking for the dramatic.

The writer believes Rizal made a retraction, was married canonically,
and was given what was intended to be Christian burial.

The grounds for this belief rest upon the fact that he seems never
to have been estranged in faith from the Roman Catholic Church,
but he objected only to certain political and mercenary abuses. The
first retraction is written in his style and it certainly contains
nothing he could not have signed in Dapitan. In fact, Father Obach
says that when he wanted to marry Josefina on her first arrival there,
Rizal prepared a practically similar statement. Possibly the report of
that priest aided in outlining the draft which the Jesuits substituted
for the Archbishop's form. There is no mention of evasions or mental
reservations and Rizal's renunciation of Masonry might have been
qualified by the quibble that it was "the Masonry which was an enemy
of the Church" that he was renouncing. Then since his association
(not affiliation) had been with Masons not hostile to religion,
he was not abandoning these.

The possibility of this line of thought having suggested itself to
him appears in his evasions on the witness-stand at his trial. T