As I read your editorial about the divorce bill (3/24/18), I recalled what Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, a Polish poet, rightly said: “No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
The avalanche-like speed with which the divorce bill went through Congress was timed with the publishing of a survey which claims that more than 50 percent of Filipinos are in favor of divorce.
If the task of lawmaking is now a matter of following the party line and clamor of surveys instead of the pursuit for society’s good, then citizens have reasons to be afraid.
King Henry VIII, having been denied a divorce by the pope, proclaimed himself head of the Church of England, followed by a cruel persecution of those who opposed him.
Thomas More, although he was the king’s chancellor and friend, was no snowflake. Of course, he was beheaded; but his head now wears the halo of a saint.
As to the king, he married five other women after dumping his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Two of them, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, ended up decapitated, accused of infidelity.
History’s snowflakes pass into oblivion, but it is their descendants who will have to extricate themselves from all sorts of social avalanche.
It would be wise not to attempt to bend the arm of the Church to get from her what we want (which we know to be wrong, like divorce) — the purpose of that arm is not to strike but to pardon, and to pull us out of the muck into which we thoughtlessly jump (quite frequently).
FR. LUIS P. SUPAN, 159 Mother Ignacia Ave., Quezon City