Pural, John Braynel Mago April 26, 2017

4LM3 Reflection

Reflection on Divorce and Legal Separation

In Catholic teaching, marriage is not just a promise but a covenant to fulfill. I was born
and raised with Catholic values to be observed. They would always tell me that these values
must be observed so that family stability will be achieved. But for me, it does not really follow.
As I grow older, I have now developed a different perspective on whether or not to allow legal
separation and divorce.First and foremost, I am not tolerating any acts against the teachings of
the Catholic Church. However, it seems to me that the role of the Church is very passive when it
comes to cases of abuse and familial problems. It is a very long process both in legal aspect and
catholic doctrine before one could negate a marriage. This must not be the case especially when
there are cases when there are explicit torture, abuse and familial differences in a family. Both
the spouses and the children must be protected with utmost diligence and efficiency. It is because
sometimes, it only creates a traumatic experience when the Church acts on the case very slowly.
This passiveness must be condemned. The Church is obligated to relax its doctrine of the sanctity
of marriage in many exceptional cases. There must be a committee or commission only tasked to
resolve these cases and must act fast. The process of both legal separation and divorce can be
resorted to by family plague with serious problems. Still for me, this is not enough.

Divorce acknowledges that the spouses are no longer married while legal separation only
cut the legal rights and duties of the spouses to each other, however, there are still married in the
eyes of the law. Personally, I am favor with this kind of solution. I have seen many cases of
broken family and I think the ones who suffers the most are the children. I have many friends
who are a product of this kind of family and it is/was inevitable to cut since the things happening
to them before their parents were separated were much worse. These kind of relationship only
results to the destruction of one’s personality. It may not be apparent but the effects usually takes
place when they are trying to create a bond or they no longer have the capability to create one.
For me, the sanctity of marriage is still there even though legal separation and divorce will be
allowed in the country. It is a non-sequitor argument for one to directly correlate the idea of
divorce to the sanctity of marriage. This is my honest opinion. It is heartbreaking whenever I
would hear stories from my friends of this kind of scenario where they were verbally and
psychologically abuse before. Only if the Church has been active in addressing these kind of
issues, no further damaged has been done to them.