Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman on Sunday asserted that “nowhere in the present 1987 Constitution and the previous 1935 and 1972 Constitution, and even in the Malolos Constitution, is there a provision which prohibits the Congress from enacting an absolute divorce law.”
Despite the constitutional precepts on the sanctity and inviolability of marriage and protection for the family, the Constitution by not prohibiting absolute divorce recognizes that marriage is basically a social institution which is vulnerable to human frailties which destroy beyond repair marriages, he said.
“No less than the commissioners of the 1986 Constitutional Commission (Concom) led by Fr. Joaquin Bernas had a unanimous consensus that Congress can enact an absolute divorce law,” he added.
No commissioners then posited a dissenting view, he noted.
“In fact, Muslim Filipinos who are covered by the Constitution are granted the right to divorce and remarry. Moreover, the Family Code itself provides for relative divorce by judicially recognizing the separation of spouses from bed and board without the right to remarry. The ban on absolute divorce with the right to remarry spawns sinners, criminals and crimes as separated spouses cohabit with other partners in adultery and concubinage and give birth to hundreds of thousands of illegitimate children,” Lagman said in a statement.
The sanctity of marriage does not institute an iron-clad union which fetters, impairs and destroys, he pointed out.
Couples married under Catholic rites who separate do not commit sacrilege or sin, said Lagman.
He also said that even the Catholic Church has its own its canonical divorce, which is euphemistically called “dissolution of marriage” based on psychological incapacity.
The fact that all Catholic countries worldwide, except the Philippines and the Vatican, have legalized divorce is a veritable testament that divorce does not infringe on the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
“No less than Jesus Christ in the Bible allowed a husband to divorce an unchaste wife, and St. Paul permitted a believer to divorce a non-believer who has deserted him,” the lawmaker said.
The Philippine Catholic hierarchy must not be more popish than the Pope, Lagman said.
Divorce rescues unfortunate spouses and their suffering children from a house on fire by having their marriage dissolved under strict judicial scrutiny and awarding custody and support for their children’s benefit, he said.