The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) on Thursday maintained its position against divorce, saying “it is evil.”
In a statement, CBCP President Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, however, said that while the Catholic Church has not changed its position on divorce, it stressed that it still upholds the principle of separation of Church and State.
“The Church is in no position to dictate to the State what is best for Filipino families,” David stressed.
“We know that our stubborn assertion that a genuine marriage cannot be dissolved, is not necessarily shared by all religions; and we respect that,” he continued.
David also cited data from the National Center for Health Statistics where countries with civil divorce, “failure rate for first marriage is roughly 48%, 60% for second, and 70%.”
The bishop, however, explained that the Catholic Church doesn’t “intend to set the rules on civil marriage.”
“We know that we are in no position to do that in the first place. We respect the legislative bodies of our country and the duty of our honorable legislators to come up with just laws that truly serve the common good,” David said.
“We can only hope and pray that they consider the gravity of the task entrusted to them and the need to engage the citizens in serious conversations about the implications of the laws they make,” he added.
He further stated that spiritual leaders of the Church “can only propose but never impose.”
He added that the absence of a legal civil divorce “should in fact be an additional reason for couples to think twice or thrice before entering into a civilly-binding marital commitment.”
State of divorce in Phl
The House of Representatives on 22 May approved on the third and final reading a bill that will legalize divorce in the Philippines.
With a vote of 126-109 and 20 abstentions, the chamber passed the bill seeking to institute absolute divorce as an alternative means of dissolving an irreparably broken or dysfunctional marriage in the country.
On 12 June, the Divorce Bill has been transmitted to the Senate.
The bill stipulates the grounds for absolute divorce, which include psychological incapacity, irreconcilable differences, domestic or marital abuse, when one of the spouses undergoes a sex reassignment surgery or transitions from one sex to another, and separation of the spouses for at least five years.
This is the second time that a measure seeking to legalize absolute divorce in the Philippines was approved in the House of Representatives.
The first time was in 2018 during the 17th Congress, after which it eventually died upon reaching the Senate.
With the House's approval of the divorce bill, it will be sent to the Senate for deliberation.
The Philippines is the only country in the world, apart from Vatican City, that has not legalized divorce.
