Marriage of Josephine Bracken and Jose Rizal was Valid

Wedding and the Last Hours with Rizal

It is Rizals desire to get married with Josephine according to the Roman Catholic rite. However,
the authorities of the Catholic make a condition. Rizal should retract some earlier, as
heretic classified statements. They send the Jesuit Frater Balaguer to him in the cell. He
should try to bring him in the conversation again on the line of the Catholic Church. Now for
Rizal hours of moral conflicts and conscience examination are starting. In the end, he agrees.
The document whose original was rediscovered in 1935 in the archives of the archdiocese
Manila has the following text:

"I declare myself a Catholic and in this religion in. I retract with all my heart whatever in
my words, writings, publications and conduct has been contrary to my quality as a son
of the Catholic Church. I believe and profess whatever she teaches and I submit myself
to whatever she commands. I abominate Masonry, as the enemy that it is of the Church,
and as a Society prohibited by the Church. The Diocesan Prelate can, as the Superior
Ecclesiastical authority, make public this spontaneous manifestation of mine in order to
repair the scandals that my acts have caused and so that God and the people may
pardon me."

The retraction is for the Princes of the Church a great success. However, there are also church-
critical historians, who deny the existence of a cancellation because it would not have fitted to
Rizals character. They point out that the retraction was formulated in a very difficult and
exceptional situation and that even Rizals last poem My last Farewell implicate a church-
critical statement:

. I'll go where there are no slaves, tyrants or hangmen

Where faith does not kill and where God alone does reign.
Farewell, parents, brothers, beloved by me,
Friends of my childhood, in the home distressed;
Give thanks that now I rest from the wearisome day;
Farewell, sweet stranger, my friend, who brightened my way;
Farewell, to all I love. To die is to rest.

With the formulation sweet strangers, my friend, who brightened my way , Rizal appreciates
Josephine Bracken according to the analysts. They both get married after the Catholic rite
on the 12/30/1986, at five o'clock in the early morning, two hours before Rizal gets
executed. A certificate of marriage is not handed over to Josephine. In the moment of parting
Rizal should weeps on the shoulder of Frater Balaguer, while Josephine exclaims in the door of
the prison chapel: Wretched! Sadists! (9). An execution by heart shot is refused, because Rizal
is considered as traitor. He is shot by the back (10). The family circle is not present at the
execution.

THERES NO EVIDENCE OF THEIR MARRIAGE BEFORE HIS EXECUTION (Retrieved from:

http://www.insights-philippines.de/brackenengl.htm)
Aside from the Kempis in the National Museum, the other physical clue to the Rizal-Bracken
marriage is a handwritten autobiography preserved in the Lopez Museum where Bracken
concludes with a declaration that Before his execution, he married me at 5 oclock in the
morning.

In this document, whose authenticity has been questioned, she signed herself Josephine
Bracken de Rizal, a widow.

(Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/857823/unhappy-wife-of-jose-rizal#ixzz4iB7MOBSY)

Marriage of Josephine Bracken and Jose Rizal was Invalid

Marrying Josephine

Some references claim that even before Taufer and Josephine left for Manila, Rizal had already
proposed to her and applied for their marriage. Dapitan parish priest Antonio Obach
however wanted Rizals retraction of his anti-clerical views as a prerequisite and would
only grant the church ceremony if Rizal could get permission from the Bishop of Cebu. Either
the Bishop did not write him back or Rizal was not able to mail the letter because of the sudden
departure of Mr. Taufer (Wikipedia).

When Josephine returned to Dapitan, the church wedding she hoped for could not happen.
Rizal would not retract and so Obach denied them the permission to marry and the
Bishop of Cebu confirmed the priests decision (Bantug, p. 118).

With Josephines consent, Rizal nonetheless took her as his wife even without the Catholic
blessings. The couple married themselves before the eyes of God by holding hands in the
presence of two witnesses (Alburo).

Aware of the circumstances, Doa Teodora told her excommunicated son that loving each
other in Gods grace was better than being married in mortal sin (Bantug, p. 120). These
words somewhat gave Rizal a peace of mind. But still believing that his live-in relationship
was somewhat of a shame, Rizal never told his friend and confidant Blumentritt about it.

Goodbye Jose

When Rizal was tried on the morning of December 26, 1896, Josephine was said to be among
the spectators inside the military building, Cuartel de Espaa, along with some newspapermen
and many Spaniards (Zaide & Zaide, p. 259).

At about 6 p.m. on the day before Rizals execution, Josephine Bracken arrived in Fort
Santiago. Rizal called for her and they emotionally talked to each other.
 Though some accounts state that Josephine was forbidden from seeing her husband on the
fateful day of his martyrdom, the historian Gregorio Zaide wrote that at 5:30 a.m., she and
Josefa (Rizals sister) came. The couple was said to have embraced for the last time and Rizal
gave to Josephine the book Imitation of Christ (by Thomas a Kempis) on which he lovingly
wrote: To my dear and unhappy wife, Josephine/ December 30th, 1896/ Jose Rizal.

Theres an allegation that either the evening before or in the early morning of Rizals day of
execution, the couple was married in a ceremony officiated by the priest Vicente Balanguer.
Nonetheless, the members of Rizal family themselves seriously doubt the claim as no
records were found as regards the wedding.

(Meebog, J. (2013 August 06). Josephine Bracken: Jose Rizals Dear and Unhappy Wife.
Retrieved from: http://ourhappyschool.com/history/josephine-bracken-jose-rizals-dear-and-
unhappy-wife)

Cloudiness

Both live in now in wild marriage, in the state of the sin, for the Catholic surroundings a
scandal. Religious Josephine suffers also from it. Therefore, Rizal tries to get an
ecclesiastical wedding. For the princes of Catholic Church the passive freemason Rizal is a
heretical man. Didnt he criticize in his novel "Noli me tangere" the clergy - and here in particular
the monk's orders? Rizal feels himself strongly anchored in the Catholic belief, even if he does
not share, for example, the Mariolatry. He visits every Sunday the mass. The bishop of Cebu
who had to give special permission to the marriage sends Father Obach to Dapitan.

He should check the religious principles and should persuade him to a revocation of his church-
critical statements. Rizal formulates a cancellation which however is less satisfactory for
the Church princes in Cebu. Now the ecclesiastical marriage with Josephine is failed, for
the time being.

Whether the two had a civil marriage is controversial. The literature partly affirms and partly
denies it. We assume that this was not the case. On the one hand, Austin Craig (4) argues that
the Spanish legislation intended in principle to establish the institute of the civil marriage also in
the Philippines, however, the regulations were not installed. Rizal presumably would have got a
civil wedding only for the price of a cancellation of his political intentions. And Josephine
himself writes in a passage that she had heard from a Spaniard that if they would
marry, she would be separate from her husband (5). The historian Craig assumes that
married themselves in presence of two witnesses.

((5) One Hundred Letters of Jose Rizal to his Parents, Brother, Sisters, Relatives (Manila:
Philippine National Historical Society, 1959), 559-563 in:
http://members.aol.com/jobelizes/myhomepage/garden.html)

(Retrieved from: http://www.insights-philippines.de/brackenengl.htm)

Hebrews 13:4 describes the honorable state of marriage: Marriage should be honored by
all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually
immoral. This verse draws a clear distinction between that which is pure and honorable
marriageand that which is sexually immoralanything outside of marriage. As living together
outside of marriage falls into this category, it is definitely sin. Anyone living together outside
of lawful marriage invites the displeasure and judgment of God.

QUESTIONS:

Are you a Christian? If yes, then recite Hebrews 13:4.

If you were Doa Teodora (or a mother), would you accept your childs cohabitation or
living in with his/her loved one before getting married?