Philippines: The Catholic Church opposes the legalization of divorce
A bill to make divorce legal in the Philippines was brought in to Parliament in 2014 by a small openly feminist political party, the “Gabriela Women’s Party”, who announced that they wished to add it to the agenda for the parliamentary session this April. “By chance”, a survey was published in the local press on March 23, claiming, according to the agency Eglises d’Asi (Eda), that “60% of those surveyed” were in favor of the bill. This information got a reaction out of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, who, in a long press release published on March 25, 2015, and republished by Eda, restated the Church’s opposition to the legalization of divorce.
Archbishop Socrates Villegas, archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan and president of the Bishops’ Conference, declared that the Code of Family Law’s dispositions concerning legal separation and marriage annulment are sufficient to protect a spouse from a “brutal and cruel” spouse. “A failed marriage is not an excuse for divorce,” claimed Archbishop Villegas, explaining that one cannot change spouses “like one changes cars.” And he added that “society should be able to count on the fact that certain commitments are irrevocable.”
Ever since a law on divorce was voted in Malta in 2011, the Philippines have been the only State – besides the Vatican – in which divorce has not been legalized. According to Eda, “attempts arise regularly” to introduce into the Code of Family Law a disposition making divorce legal.
(sources” apic/eda – DICI no.314 April 24, 2015)
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