Divorce: God’s warning to Marcos and Congress
THE parallels between 2012 and 2024 are striking — and cautionary for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Congress.
Twelve years ago, then President Benigno Aquino 3rd told legislators in Malacañang to cast a “conscience vote” on the Reproductive Health or RH Bill, opposed by devout Catholics. That set aside politics to heed inner moral promptings — God’s voice for believers.
In the House of Representatives on Dec. 12, 2012 — the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Philippines’ secondary patroness and the miraculous icon showing the Virgin Mary pregnant with our Lord — congressmen narrowly approved the RH bill on second reading, 113 to 104.
Opponents had a fighting chance. But a week later, the final vote swung to 133 ayes against 79 nays. That day, said Batasan insiders, yes votes got pork barrel releases.
This writer denounced two colossal transgressions: fighting God’s voice in lawmakers’ hearts and corruptly advancing legislation leading to, among other evils, killing unborn children with abortifacient contraceptives, as the Supreme Court eventually ruled.
Voting patterns indicate something besides legislative deliberation propelling the RH passage. In July 2012 House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. already stated that the bill had been “discussed from every possible perspective by advocates and opponents alike not only in the present Congress but in past congresses … it is time we finally put it to a vote. Let the chips fall where they may.”
Thus, by December, congressmen had well over sufficient time to deliberate all arguments and information. Yet after just a week, yes men leapt, and naysayers dropped. No new perspective swept aside anti-RH views. Rather, there was party pressure and material inducements.
One more thing: In June 2013, six months after the RH Law passed, Catholic bishops consecrated our nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Repeating history
Today, we have another measure opposed by the Church for decades but pushed by Western social advocates — the Absolute Divorce Bill. Plus, a promised conscience vote, House approval with about 130 yeses amid apparently illicit action, and national consecration.
Like Aquino, current Speaker Martin Romualdez declared a conscience vote. After voting, however, former Senate president Vicente Sotto 3rd said the initial report of 126 yeses fell short.
As House rules stipulate, on the third and final reading, “The bill is approved by an affirmative vote of a majority of the members present” (https://www.congress.gov.ph/legisinfo/#THIRD). House secretary-general Reginald Velasco had reported 255 legislators present on May 22, so 126 was short by two.
But Velasco subsequently changed the yes tally to 131, barely reaching a majority of the altered
number of 260 lawmakers deemed present. It’s not pork barrel, but the tally revision still seemed dubious and, as Sotto decried, illegal.
On the religious front, just as bishops consecrated the country in 2013, so did President Marcos recently to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He prayed before the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe “in this troubled hour when the unclean waves of an open immorality, which has even lost the notion of sin … Unite all the Filipino people around thy divine Son in the love of the Church and also in the civilization of virtue and respect for order …”
Religious feast days appeared to comment on the legislation. The icon of Mary pregnant provided a counterpoint to the 2012 RH bill approved by the House a week after her December 12 feast.
The divorce measure passed on the May 22 memorial of St. Rita of Cascia. A popular patron of hopeless causes, whose body remains incorrupt since her death in 1457, St. Rita endured 18 years of abuse by her husband before he died, and she became a nun — a holy riposte to the dissolution of marriage.
And if St. Rita’s feast is not enough heavenly admonition, the May 24 Mass Gospel reading two days later makes God’s opposition crystal clear. As St. Mark recounted (Mk 10:1-12), Jesus told the Pharisees arguing that Moses legalized divorce:
“Because of the hardness of your hearts, he wrote you this commandment (for divorce). But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. 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.”
The scary part
What happened after Aquino signed the RH Law on Dec. 21, 2012, and bishops consecrated the Philippines to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary on June 8, 2013, the feast of the Immaculate Heart celebrated on the same date this year?
In July 2013, the pork barrel controversy erupted, leading to the largest anti-Aquino protest and the filing of kickback charges against Janet Napoles and three senators.
In August the P157-billion Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) scandal came to light, the largest malversation in Philippine history, allegedly used in the Senate trial of impeached chief justice Renato Corona.
Then came the Zamboanga City siege in September by Muslim rebels under Nur Misuari, the Bohol earthquake in October, and Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in November.
Also, in November 2013, the Supreme Court voted 14-0 to declare pork barrel unconstitutional, banning the instrument allegedly circumventing the conscience vote. On July 1, 2014, the justices also unanimously voided DAP and ordered the Ombudsman to probe and prosecute its authors: Aquino and his budget secretary.
Did he learn from all those calamities and setbacks? Sadly, no.
On Jan. 16, 2015, before Pope Francis in Malacañang and on nationwide and online TV, Aquino sacrilegiously accused Catholic prelates of criticizing him but not his predecessor — totally false, as bishops’ statements from 2001 to early 2010 show (https://cbcponline.net/ pastoral-statements/).
Ten days later came Aquino’s worst crisis: the Mamasapano massacre of 40 police commandos.
With the foregoing debacles, his public support plummeted, his chosen successor lost the 2016 elections, and his Liberal Party shriveled.
We pray our leaders today won’t have to learn the hard way not to mess with God.