Should we allow divorce in this country?

For tonight’s special presentation on Straight from the Sky, we bring you an educational show and teach you what you need to know about Good Corporate Governance. Filipinos have always wanted transparency, accountability and fairness in our dealings whether it is with a local or foreign company or corporation or with various government agencies of organizations. Yet few people are schooled or know what is Good Corporate Governance.

Last July 5-9, 2010, the Institute of Corporate Governance (ICD) held for the first time Corporate Governance Orientation Program (CGOP). This was a one-day seminar that covered the essential principles of modern corporate governance practices. This was taught by ICD Professor Dr. Jesus “Jess” Estanislao. This was followed by the Professional Directors Program (PDP) for four days with Prof. Cesar G. Saldaña who gave us a dissertation of what good corporate governance practices is all about and the past and current practices as examples.

To give us a bird’s eye view of what Good Corporate Governance can do for our country, we bring you two participants of the PDP Program, Mr. Philip Tan and Mr. Dondi Joseph who will share with us the need and the reasons why everyone should know what Good Corporate Governance is all about. So please watch this very educational show on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00pm

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Before the renewed battle for the up and coming Reproductive Health (RH) bill gets underway, the Gabriela Women’s Party-list group has resurrected another controversial bill with their proposal to legalize Divorce in the Philippines purportedly in order to help irreparable marriages. This proposal is House Bill no.1799, which was authored by Rep. Luzviminda Ilagan and Rep. Emerenciana de Jesus. So the debate has begun whether or not we should have Divorce in this country.

Of course, as a Catholic nation, the Catholic Church frowns on this because God does not permit divorce. Allow me to quote from the Bible, specifically on Matthew 19: 3-9.

“Some Pharisees approached him, and tested him saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever? Jesus said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together no human being must separate.’

Then they said to him, “Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss her? Jesus said to them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce you wives, but from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery.”

Most of the laws of this world stem from the moral teachings that trace its origins from the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments. So, should Congressmen who are on a three-year term of office change what has been practiced for more than two millennia? I don’t think so. Naturally, I expect that this debate would split our people into pros and the cons. Men, being men, would certainly agree to the escape hatch that is known as Divorce, which is practiced in many western nations.

But there’s more to this issue than just taking sides. It is easy to side with those suffering people who made a terrible mistake of getting married to the wrong partner. But there are ill-effects when a married couple divorces, which is especially devastating for their children. Just check out the various books by psychologists on what broken marriages have done to their children. This is not to mention the great hassle it could bring to families and their respective businesses.

Allowing Divorce in this country would further clog our already fully clogged courts of law. Certainly, passing a Divorce law would make a lot of lawyers very happy. But allowing Divorce in this country means, it would diminish the sanctity of marriage. Later on, men and women won’t get married anymore because they cannot stand or fathom a nasty divorce. So we should tread very carefully on this issue because the divorce rates in the US has reached a record high.

What I would like to see are studies about divorce in Catholic countries like Mexico or Italy because I’m very sure that the statistics are not very good. Instead of passing a Divorce law, I would rather see our House of Representatives or even the Catholic Church come up with a more stringent pre-marriage laws or rules for couple interested in getting married to take so there would be lesser failed marriages and lesser family troubles.