Chiming in on divorce

Whose agenda is it anyway? Divorce is demanded in the name of women-empowerment. But if it is to be a law—and a just law, as laws ought to be!—then it ought to be empowerment of men and women alike. The absence of a divorce law at present imposes a disability on both men and women, so why should it be championed as if its defeat would be a setback for women’s rights? Is it really the nation’s agenda, because I cannot assume that it is. In many respects, it looks very much like a challenge to the authority of the Church. If it is, it would be puerile. You do not pass a law to embarrass a sector of society. In other respects, it smacks of sophistry: If other countries have divorce, why don’t we? If it this specious, it should not be passed because we should endeavor at all times to be reasonable.

Why force two persons who have turned into incarnations of Satan for each other to live under the same roof? That is the supposedly rhetorical question asked to elicit support for the divorce proposal. In the first place, no one forces anyone to live under the same roof with anyone else. Marriage is something two persons freely enter into; in fact, when there is vitiation of this freedom in any respect whatsoever, the validity of the marriage or its continued subsistence —since we retain the rather obsolescent category of “voidable” marriages—must be asked about. In the second place when cohabitation has become a daily ordeal because of cruelty, crass infidelity or violence of even the psychological kind, there are already existing remedies, penalties even for offenders.

It is funny how its advocates argue for it. When it was pointed out that the proposed grounds for divorce are the very grounds that constitute a cause of action for a declaration of nullity or an annulment of marriage, one of its television advocates answered: For declarations of nullity (and for annulment, in some cases), you need the expert testimony of psychiatrists—and hiring an expert to testify on one’s behalf is beyond the means of many women. Is this it? Is there no more respect for the canons of logic? Is it enough to raise the banner of women-power and then condemn as gender-biased those who shun this illogicality? Shall we read the divorce proposal then as the open back-door from marriage that does away with the guarantees that the law has set in place for the protection of the family?

When a mother has problems with her children—and these can be as heart-breaking and as enervating as dysfunctional relations between spouses —she does not go to court to be asked to be relieved of parenthood. Our laws do not allow that. One who freely takes upon herself the role of mother must do all she can to meet the demands of motherhood. The absence of a escape door compels the mother either to shape up or to suffer the misery of her own failure the rest of her life. When you make divorce available to spouses because of “irreconcilable differences”, you make the differences irreconcilable. People work at settling their differences and arriving at some acceptable modus vivendi when they must. It is this compulsion that divorce would remove. So how much effort would spouses put into making their marriages work if the back-door is ajar, enticing them to new adventures (and perhaps, repeated mistakes!)

Society rests on some vows, commitments that it should not allow people to turn their backs on. The commitment of parenthood is one of them. Vocations are likewise of this nature, and marriage is a vocation. Divorce is the pretentious posture that nothing we do need be forever; it depends on us. That is the reason Allan Bloom (who authored the highly provocative book, “The Closing of the American Mind”) says people today prefer to speak of ‘commitments’ (that depend on me to keep) rather than ‘obligations’ (that bind me, no matter what).

A reprise is necessary. The misery of people trapped in what has become a nightmarish union is really not the issue, because if it were the existing remedies —including a broadened construal of “psychological incapacity”—would suffice. The real reason then is because one wishes the partners to a previous union the freedom to be hooked to other partners! It is the fallacy of infinite chances. We delude ourselves, Foucault writes, by convincing ourselves that things are the way we want them to be, and divorce is part of that delusion! True women empowerment would consist in the legal power of a woman to compel her wayward and recalcitrant husband to mend his ways because there is no way out of the union (unless the present grounds for nullity and annulment exist)!

Professor Jose Flores Espinosa, who used to be legal counsel of UP, engaged in philosophical reading, writing and teaching. He devised what to me is still a compelling “indirect proof’ (that logicians construct by negating the proposition they maintain and showing the absurd consequences thereof) against divorce. You either grant divorce on any ground, or on some grounds. But to grant divorce on any ground would be to make marriage an empty gesture, and eventually render divorce itself superfluous. So you grant it on some grounds. But if you do, you make the unwarranted assumption that the spouses laboring under the grounds set forth suffer more—and are therefore more deserving of relief—than those laboring under grounds not recognized by the law. But what real, credible and reliable measure is there to determine with reasonable certainty who suffer more or less? In this case, the grant of divorce on some grounds and not on others would be unfair. You would then either end up making of marriage a pointless exercise, or being unfair in granting it to some and not to others. Since neither of these is an acceptable position, then the very proposition of granting divorce is itself unacceptable.

The case against divorce becomes even more acute when we confront the undeniable fact that the harm visited on children of broken families is incalculable, its scars borne all through life! It will not do to retort that as grievous a harm is visited on them by compelling their parents who are at each others’ throats whenever they meet each other to live together. The unreasonably excluded alternative is: Then, the parents must do something about their immaturity and face the responsibility that a son or a daughter is. My stand against divorce is therefore also my stand for responsibility! –Fr. Ranhilio Callangan Aquino, Manila Standard Today

rannie_aquino@rannieaquino.com; rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph