diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

35. Still, one must not forget that this unpleasant and embarassingincident could have had greater publicity than is believed, for already in 1872we find on the printed page an event of similar characteristics. It can bechecked, however. Manrique Alonso Lallave, former Dominican expelledfrom the Philippines in 1871—we shall speak more of him—afterabandoning the Catholic Church, widely ventilates abuses in the Islands bythe religious orders. Referring to priestly celibacy, he writes: "The other caseis that of a pastor of a certain town, father of a pretty girl, who madly in lovewith another friar, fled with him and made her irritated father go out in pursuitof the abductor. Good that the other one stood firm in his house, otherwisethere would have been a combat as in the ancient times, when knights foughtfor their ladies." Manrique Alonso Lallave, Los frailes en Filipinas (Madrid,1872), 76. The story could have also reached Rizal through more complicatedchannels. The Garchitorenas residing in Pandacan, the town whose parishpriest in 1871 was Fray Serafm Terren were in contact with a• wide group ofliberals or sympathizers with liberal movements, among whom we canmention Federico Lerena, the Regidor brothers, Rafael Maria de Labra, andFr. Vicente Garcia, a secular priest—he defended Rizal's Noli—whocertainly were aware of Fray Terren's personal problems. The latter hadbeen, among other things, Vicar Forane in the Diocese of Nueva Caceres towhich Sangay, the Franciscan's former parish, belonged. This point needs tobe emphasized. Leon Ma. Guerrero, on pages -135-136 of his The FirstFilipino, believes that the heart of the plot of the Noli is not so much the dirtyand unrelieved animosity between the Franciscans Damaso and Salvi, on oneside, against Crisostomo Ibarra, on the other, not for political reasons, but"out of the basest sexual motives, one because he is Maria Clara'ssacrilegious father,_ and the other because he sacrilegiously desires her. Thushe denies the friars even the dignity of their convictions." Knowing this factcould not have brought Rizal, logically, to a similar conclusion, or at least toa generalization as he did. However, with greater access to more detailedinformation, and strongly influenced by the liberal ideas which he imbibed inMadrid, the Philippine national hero, as Guerrero indicates, arrived at theconclusion that "they [the friars] must, at all costs, even at the cost of fairnessand charity, be stripped of even their sacerdotal immunities and mysticalpowers and exposed to ridicule and hatred." Guerrero, Op. cit., 136. I amconvinced this was the process followed by Rizal's thinking, such and as itwill appear in the following pages.276