Legalizing Divorce in the Philippines Claim of Fact Brainly

The Church and her faithful, De Jesus argues, have the right to believe in the sanctity of marriage, but do not have the right to impose these beliefs on others who disagree. The state, she added, should view divorce not as a reprehensible sin, but as a civil right. “The state should recognize that if you have the right to enter into a contract, you have the right to leave it,” De Jesus said. This has not always been the case. Before explorer Ferdinand Magellan claimed the Philippines for the Spanish crown and began converting the natives to Catholicism in 1521, divorce was widely practiced by the traditional tribes of the archipelago, according to anthropologists. But four centuries of Spanish rule, largely perpetrated by Catholic religious orders, effectively eradicated the custom. The poll showed that 30 percent of Filipinos “strongly agreed,” while 23 percent “tended to agree” with the proposal to legalize divorce for irreconcilably separated couples, a total of 53 percent. Besides Vatican City, the Philippines is the only country in the world that does not have a divorce law. Married couples who want to separate only have one cancellation option.

Nonsense, says Padilla. She says the Philippines “is pretty much behind the rest of the world” — even in the “dark ages,” she says — when it comes to issues like divorce and LGBT rights. The Philippines is now the only country in the world that denies divorce to the majority of its citizens. It is the latest recalcitrant in a group of staunchly Catholic countries where the Church has fought hard to impose its views on the sanctity of marriage. Pope Francis, who visited the Philippines last week, has urged his bishops to take a more lenient stance toward divorced Catholics, but it`s a controversial point in the Philippines: There is no divorced Catholic. If enough Filipinos publicly show that they support a divorce bill, populist Duterte could join. Some observers suspect that giving people what they want while giving the Church a black eye, could be a second that Duterte simply cannot resist. “The president is against divorce,” Duterte`s spokesman said at a press conference after the ruling in March this year. To become law, the bill must be passed by the Senate and approved by the president. But the House bill, which passed by a vote of 134 to 57, is important because no divorce law has ever been more present in the Philippines, says sociologist Jayeel Cornelio of Ateneo de Manila University. He called the law “unprecedented,” but also logical in a country where a recent poll found that more than half of Filipinos favor allowing divorce “for irreconcilably separated couples.” Annulment differs from divorce in that the parties must prove that the marriage was flawed from the beginning: that one or both were too young to marry (the minimum age in the Philippines is 18; for Muslim men it is 15, for girls “puberty”); appropriate parental consent has not been obtained; one of the parties was already married or suffering from an incurable sexually transmitted disease; or, more often, was “mentally incompetent” at the time of marriage. An ecclesiastical court or civil judge may then declare that the marriage never took place.

The Church asks to be different. “[Divorce advocates] see marriage as a contract. For us, it is a sacrament,” said Father Edgardo Pangan, a canonical lawyer who specializes in annulments. “We cannot compromise with God`s laws. Although the divorce bill has received strong support in the House of Representatives, opposition is much stronger in the Senate. De Jesus, the co-sponsor of the law, says the Catholic Church remains the loudest opponent of divorce because it is “afraid of losing its cultural dominance over the majority of the country.” However, she noted that according to the 1987 constitution, the separation between church and state should be inviolable in the Philippines. A bill that would legalize divorce in the Philippines is now before the legislature, but it is unlikely to become law without the support of President Benigno Aquino III, who has declared divorce a “no-no” for the nation of the archipelago. Aquino, a single and practicing Catholic, said he didn`t want the Philippines to become like Las Vegas, where “you get married in the morning [and] you get divorced in the afternoon.” The lack of a divorce option offers “a sense of comfort to male philanders,” according to Evalyn Ursua, a lawyer who specializes in nullity cases and has advocated for the legalization of divorce. “With a [law prohibiting divorce], they know they can continue this lifestyle where they have their beautiful and loyal wife – and also the comfort and status of their beloved,” she said. “A divorce law would allow women to put an end to this.” Yet there is an unusual level of bipartisan support for the divorce bill — a concern of the Catholic Church.

According to the announcement, the Philippines and the Vatican are currently the only two sovereign states in the world that still prohibit divorce. The announcement also explained that the approved bill includes the following grounds that can be invoked to file for divorce: One of the results of the Church`s opposition to divorce and its opposition to virtually any form of contraception has been millions of “illegitimate” children. No one knows the number, but one study suggests that about 30% of births in the Philippines go unregistered, often due to the stigma of illegitimacy. The bill, titled “A Law Providing for Absolute Divorce and Dissolution of Marriage in the Philippines,” is also historic for other reasons: it is the most advanced a divorce bill has reached in the legislative process, and it is a rare bipartisan effort involving lawmakers from all House blocs. (EXPLANATION: What are the reasons, the provisions of the Houses Divorce Act?) The universal Church, for its part, is gradually losing ground in the fight against divorce. The first blow came in 1970, when Italy legalized divorce, despite fierce opposition from the Vatican. An attempt to repeal Italy`s divorce law was soundly rejected in a referendum in 1974. This was followed by Brazil, which legalized divorce in 1977, followed by Spain (1981), Argentina (1987), Ireland (1997) and Chile (2004).

It`s unclear what the statue is meant to honor, but it`s a fitting memorial to something sorely lacking in the Philippines: a divorce law. (March 4, 2020) On February 4, 2020, a bill proposing the legalization of divorce in the Philippines was approved by the Population and Family Relations Committee of the House of Representatives of the Philippines. Currently, the Philippines and the Vatican are the only two sovereign states in the world that still prohibit divorce. Despite a façade of religious piety, Philander is deeply rooted in Filipino society, from the privileged to the poorest. “It`s machismo. and wives don`t make a fuss about having mistresses,” said MP Emerenciana De Jesus, who is co-funding the divorce bill. But while rich men often continue to provide for their wives and children to save appearances, poor women usually find themselves abandoned and left alone to care for their children. There are laws that require working fathers to provide for their biological children, but they are so rarely enforced that most people don`t know they exist. The bill states that it seeks to “protect children from the pain, stress and anguish resulting from their parents` constant marital conflicts” and “give divorced spouses the right to remarry in order to have another chance at marital happiness.” – Rappler.com far from turning the Philippines into another Las Vegas, As proposed by President Aquino, the divorce bill proposed by De Jesus and the Gabriela Women`s Party is very conservative and, according to its authors, respects “the cultural sensitivities of the Philippines”. The grounds for divorce in this bill include physical abuse of a spouse or child, imprisonment of a spouse for more than six years, abandonment for more than one year, sexual infidelity or perversion, bigamy, homosexuality or substance abuse.