Approval of divorce bill is a ‘serious injustice’

This letter concerns the article “Divorce bill gets Senate panel’s nod” (Inquirer.net, 9/19/23).

The divorce bill, Senate Bill No. 2443, was approved by the Senate committee on women, children, family relation, and gender equality. A total of nine senators signed the approval.

I wish to express my disappointment for what they have done because in my view, they have done a serious injustice to our nation. I will explain.

Marriage is a natural institution. It has existed ever since men and women began to exist. It existed even before our state and its authorities ever existed. Being a natural institution, it is universal. All nations and cultures know it and live within this institution.

Being a natural institution, its qualities and essential characteristics are given by nature. If you wish to be more specific, marriage and its qualities are God-given. Marriage is not an invention of man.

Marriage is established by a bond that, in turn, is created by the matrimonial consent of the spouses. Once they declare their consent in the form established by custom or law then the bond exists, and they are married. Although this bond was made effective by the consent of the spouses, the nature of the bond is beyond them. The nature of the bond is given by the author of the institution of marriage.

Civil authority did not invent marriage. And civil authority did not create the marriage bond and its characteristics.

Divorce is the decree issued by civil authority that declares the bond of marriage to be dissolved with the result that the parties revert to single status, and they allegedly can get married again.

This is where the gross injustice comes in. Civil authority through divorce is arrogating to itself a power it does not have. Did civil authority create the institution of marriage? Did they create the marriage bond? What right do they have to say they can dissolve the marriage bond? Where did they get that power? Where is it written? In what law? From whose authority? Claiming to have a power one does not have and enforcing it on people is a grave injustice.

Passing the divorce bill violates our Constitution. In Article XV, Section 2, we read: “Marriage, as an inviolable social institution, is the foundation of the family and shall be protected by the State.”

Divorce literally destroys a marriage. How can our senators say they are not violating the Constitution which demands that we protect marriage as an inviolable institution?

Any grave injustice always brings grave harm to our people.

Martin Luther King once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” But with a divorce law covering our entire nation, we have injustice everywhere.

Fr. Cecilio L. Magsino,

[email protected]