In real-life situation, Rizal chose religion over love

In the final portion of the Miss Universe pageant, Shamcey Supsup was asked a now-famous hypothetical question about whether she would change her religion for the man she loves. And she gave a hypothetical answer. In 1891, Jose Rizal was faced with just that choice. He and his sweetheart at the time, the wealthy half Pinay-half English Nelly Boustead, had talked about getting married. But Nelly asked Rizal to first convert. We will let Austin Coates’ remarkable biography of Rizal tell the rest of the story. Nelly Boustead was a Protestant – though whether her parents were is uncertain – and she held decided views on the subject. She disliked what she seems to have taken to be agnosticism in Rizal, and seeing him as being far-strayed from the Roman Catholic fold, believed he should re-think his ideas and become a Protestant. Actually, to a young woman of such conviction as Nelly, difference of faith was an impediment to be avoided in choosing a husband. Desiring now to marry him, but still unsure of his motives, she did a sensible thing. She promised that she would wait till he was ready to raise with her father the question of a formal engagement, but on one condition: that he "embrace Christianity as I understand it and as it should be understood by all who cannot do anything good without His help and His grace." In a letter to Nelly from Paris he questioned the sincerity of her promise to wait for him, in view of the condition she had imposed with it. In view of what had transpired between them all at Biarritz she was shocked, and grew more certain that in her attitude towards him she had been right. She replied: "I was very much surprised to receive your letter, which fortunately did not fall into the hands of my parents." But she was still prepared to marry him. When her parents asked her what her sentiments were towards him, she explained to them about the religious condition she had imposed. She wrote to Jose: "I have even suggested to them, to tell you that I am disposed to wait for some time so that you may examine the question with calm and concentration and without haste." But his implication that she had made her promise to him out of mere caprice had grieved her, and she knew she must finalize matters. She asked him: "Do you yield then? Since I shall ask you not to write to me again, I shall also give you another opportunity, if you desire to accept it. Think well of the condition I have imposed and will always impose on you. If you end by becoming convinced, then come to me and we shall explain ourselves viva voce. In that way there will be no misunderstandings." The correspondence continued, but he would not give in. It was in effect a gentle parting of friends. When a little later he was leaving Europe she wrote: "Since you are leaving, I wish you bon voyage and success in your enterprises, and above all that the Lord may look upon you with favourable eyes wherever you may be and may shower on you blessings, which may you learn to appreciate! My remembrances will accompany you as well as my prayers." The qualities Rizal most admired in women were constancy and loyalty, each of them qualities implying determination. But as with his colleagues, he was not a man to take easily to determination unless it lay in the same direction as his own. Though he and Nelly Bousted were much alike in character, it would have been a difficult marriage. Nelly too, like many who knew him, did not understand him when it came to religion. He was much more of a Catholic than she knew, as he subsequently showed in one of his letters to (Jesuit priest) Father Pastells, in which, without mentioning names, he refers to this incident: "As for being a Protestant - if Your Reverence knew what I lost by not declaring myself in conformity with Protestant ideas, he would not say such a thing. By not respecting, always, the idea of religion, by treating religion, for myself, as a science of convenience or as an artifice for doing myself well in this life, instead of being a poor deportee I would now be rich, free and see myself heaped with honours." - HS, GMA News