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 the separation of Church and State.

“The Church is in no position to dictate on 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 said.

David cited data from the National Center for Health Statistics that showed that in countries with civil divorce, “the failure rate for a first marriage is roughly 48 percent, 60 percent for the second, and 70 percent for the third.”

The bishop, however, explained that the Catholic Church does not “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 pointed out that spiritual leaders of the Church “can only propose but never impose.”

He said the absence of 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.”