Santiago, Chile — This is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that still prohibits divorce. But, after a 120-year battle, Chile is on the threshold of approving a law to change that, even though the result may carry so many qualifications and preconditions that the process of ending a marriage could become even more complex.
Opponents, led by the Roman Catholic Church and its allies in the main right-wing party in this nation of 15 million people, are fighting to have the bill include compulsory mediation, waiting periods of up to five years and no possibility of divorce unless both partners want it. In the name of human rights and family values, they are also demanding that couples be allowed to choose marriage with a “no divorce” option.
…”What should not be done is to opt for solutions that imply the destruction of the notion of the family,” Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz, the archbishop of Santiago, wrote in a pastoral letter called “Let No Man Tear Asunder,” issued in June. “Many countries have done precisely that,” he added, but “their experience demonstrates that introducing divorce is not the right road.”
Those in the U.S. who decry Chile not having divorce laws are crack addicts sitting in a crack house complaining about other countries that don’t have accessible crack houses. Is our country really so blind to the repercussions of the destructions of families? Where there is no stability for children or spouses and their life could be upturned at any time for any reason.
…”With no divorce, people don’t want to get married,” said Ximena Diaz, director of the Center for Women’s Studies. “It’s going to be interesting to see what happens now.”
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The Apostles wondered the same when they asked:
The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry.” But he said to them, “Not all men can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given.
If somebody doesn’t want to get married because there is no divorce possible, then I believe they shouldn’t be getting married in the first place. If they don’t have the commitment to marriage at the outset, then how will they react when problems do crop up? Marriage with an escape hatch is hardly commitment to marriage at all.
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Makes me think of Chesterton:
The revolt against vows has been carried in our day even to the extent of a revolt against the typical vow of marriage. It is most amusing to listen to the opponents of marriage on this subject. They appear to imagine that the ideal of constancy was a yoke mysteriously imposed on mankind by the devil, instead of being, as it is, a yoke consistently imposed by all lovers on themselves. They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words — `free-love’ — as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern sages offer to the lover, with an ill-favoured grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens, as the record of his highest moment. They give him every liberty except the liberty to sell his liberty, which is the only one that he wants.
(from A Defence of Rash Vows)
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