Carvajal: Second chance
ONLY two countries in the world do not allow divorce, the Philippines and the Vatican. But before Catholic Filipinos beat their chests with pride and in triumph, they should get a load of this.
The Vatican is a sacerdotal-monarchical sovereign city-state ruled by the Bishop of Rome – the Pope. It does not have a divorce law because the Catholic Church is against divorce and in Vatican City the Church is the State.
In 2018 Vatican’s total population is 801 people. That’s right, 801. Of these, 70 percent hold Vatican citizenship and they are mostly celibate clergy and religious. Hence it has no use for a divorce law.
The Philippines on the other hand is a secular pluralistic state where unlike in the Vatican Catholicism is not the state religion. Its citizens belong to many religions or to no religion at all. It has a population of a 106 million of which a high percentage is married. In turn, a significant number of couples are de facto either separated or living with their children in the dehumanizing conditions of a failed marriage.
Although the majority is Catholic, in 2016 more couples got married (41.6 percent) in civil ceremonies than in the Catholic Church (37.5 percent). As in artificial contraception, if the Church is against divorce, it can only just teach, advice, counsel its married members to shun divorce. It can neither impose this stand on non-Catholics nor prevent the state from enacting a divorce law.
In any case, it is not divorce that violates the sanctity of marriage. It is rather the physical and emotional abuse and other types of inhuman exploitation by either one or both variably irresponsible and immature partners. It is also not so much divorce that traumatizes children as their having to grow up in a dysfunctional home.
If the Archdiocese of Cebu worries that divorce might become a go-to pill for couples in a bad marriage, why are parishes not providing troubled couples remedies that are vintage Catholic? How many parishes have anything like the Kahupayan Center of Sto. Rosario which is an adequately financed programmatic approach to helping women in distress? Annulment is a very expensive pill only rich Catholics can afford.
We are human and prone to error. We need a second chance when we make mistakes even in marriage. We also need to liberate spouse-and-child-victims of a dead marriage and give them a fresh start at a normal family life. Christian compassion demands that Matthew 19:6, “What God has joined together let no man put asunder,” should dovetail with John 20:23, “Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them.”
If drug-crazed addicts deserve a second chance, why not couples and innocent children suffering hell on earth in a dead marriage?