CBCP PREXY: Divorce can destroy reparable marriages

DAVAO CITY—While recognizing the fact that there are couples who end up with ‘failed marriages’, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) is asking legislators to reconsider their stance on legalizing divorce as it could destroy even those repairable marriages but on the brink of failure.

“We merely ask that they consider the possibility that divorce, while it may indeed provide quick legal remedies for some seemingly “failed marriages”, might end up destroying even those marriages that could have been saved by dialogues or the intervention of family, friends, pastors, and counsellors,” said CBCP President and Archbishop of Davao Romulo G. Valles in a statement signed March 13.

The archbishop said that while it is the goodwill of the pro-divorce legislators to push for the legalizing of the dissolution of marriages, they just wish to reconsider their moves.

“We do not even question the fact that there are indeed failed marriages and that not all married couples were ‘joined together by God’,” he said.

He added that the Church have provisions for canonical annulments and the state also has civil annulment, though they are not the exact equivalent of divorce.

“They are provisions that demonstrate how seriously we take marriage as an institution such that we make room for the possibility that some marriages might have been null and void from the start, such as when couples enter into marriage not for love, but for family pressure, and for many other similar reasons that suggest that no valid marriage took place,” he said, adding:

“The legal remedies for such difficult circumstances are not lacking in our existing laws, both civil and canonical.”

NOT AN EASY OPTION

The archbishop has exhorted the lawmakers to consult various experts in various fields in order to consider the many implications of legalizing divorce, not just on families but on the Philippine society as a whole.

“Ask people around and they’ll have no second thoughts affirming that the family remains as one of our most valued treasures as Filipinos. Do we really intend to follow the same path taken by so-called “progressive countries” like the US where 4 out of 10 marriages end up in divorce?” he quipped.

“The social costs that go with an easy recourse to the dissolution of a marriage when couples begin to face the difficult challenges of marital love and commitment are what we ask our legislators to consider seriously,” Abp. Valles added.

The archbishop said that even couples in seemingly successful marriages would often look back and recall the countless challenges that had almost brought their relationship to a breaking point if they had not learned to transcend personal hurts through understanding and forgiveness, or sometimes through the intervention of a dialogue facilitator such as a marriage counselor.

CHILDREN, FAMILY VALUES COME FIRST

In the statement, the archbishop said that divorce has been presented as an easy option that could end with families breaking up more easily and more children will grow up disoriented and deprived of the care of both parents.

“Like Catholics in most other countries where divorce is legal, we wish to assert that nothing, not even a divorce law can make us give up our faith in the indissolubility of marriage as a lifetime covenant between a man and woman who have freely said yes to the call to love and commit themselves to God and to each other, through thick and thin,” Archbishop Valles ended.

It can be learned that leaders of the Couples for Christ have pledged their support to the Church in upholding marriage as a sacrament despite calls for the dissolubility of marriage.