My replies to Conrado de Quiros’s column What Man Has Put Together, July 8, in green.

The battle lines are being drawn in Congress. That’s between Church and State, and that’s over divorce.

The State is being championed by Sonny Belmonte and the Church by Rep. Marcelino Teodoro of Marikina. The Speaker is all for divorce and wants it taken up by the current Congress, though saying it won’t be a priority. Teodoro finds it an abomination and has re-filed a bill seeking to block it. His bill, he says, will fight the “unlawful dissolution of marriage,” and protect the family as the inviolable foundation of the nation.

Well, if divorce is going to pass, now is the best time for it. RH showed how the stranglehold of the Church on Philippine life, or Philippine electoral politics, has greatly waned. Gone are the days when it could threaten politicians with hellfire, or its secular equivalent which is losing in the elections. The Church’s condemnation of those who voted for RH hardly produced a ripple, other than as sideshow entertainment, such as when a church in Bacolod put up a sign in front of its yard separating the saved from the doomed. There’s a better chance this time of debating the thing without this extraneous element, or pretty much on its merits.

Which augurs well for it. The opposition to it is not based on moral grounds, it is based on hypocritical ones. Let me count the ways:

One, the sole justification for proscribing divorce is St. Luke’s account of Jesus Christ saying, “What God has put together, let no man put asunder.” That may be true, but why should you construe every marriage as something God put together?

Look at the reasons why many Filipinos marry: Variously because the woman is “damaged goods,” nagalaw na; because that’s what their parents want; because with the Church proscription against premarital sex that is the only way the magkasintahan can exchange affections physically—and ask yourself if God had anything to do with it. The last is particularly benighted and is probably the biggest cause of failed marriages in this country. Marrying for sex is an almost surefire guarantee for failure. One or the other of the couples soon discovers that sex is overrated, or discovers it is so underrated they want to have more of it elsewhere (the husband in particular, the wife is banned from it on pain of stoning, or its modern equivalent).

(I believe there is a term for a marriage of damaged goods. It is called void ad initio, or nothing from the start. That is a ground for separation under Canon law. Both parties can live separately but cannot remarry. If you remove a door out, you will make sure you will not enter the house at all. I think the Church recognizes that not everyone who enters into marriage is an intellectual or a saint, hence, it has Canon Law to help those who did not have the courage to stand for principle in the first place.)

Why drag God into that arrangement? As we say in Filipino, “Dinamay pa ang Diyos sa kanyang kalokohan.”
Two, except for the Vatican, a city of less than a thousand souls, we’re the only country that bans divorce. Is it possible Italy itself, the one country known for its fetish with family it even calls the Mafia so, can be so unprotective or dismissive of the very foundation of its life? Is it possible most of the 7 billion souls in the world today are condemned to go to hell for abiding so reprehensible a thing as divorce? It’s enough to overpopulate Dante’s favorite place. Well, maybe it’s a good strategy to get Beelzebub to rethink his policy of letting loose temptation upon the earth to ease up on the massive exodus to his dominion.

(Don’t be pat. Just because the whole world sees an issue one way doesn’t mean we should see it that way, too. What happened to principle?)

Three, the Church finds divorce anathema but annulment not so. In fact, annulment is the alternative to divorce which is available only to the rich. It takes time, effort and money. What is annulment? It is the act of dissolving a marriage by proclaiming that the marriage never really took place because: the marriage was infirm, there was really no consent on the part of one or both of the parties; there was no consummation, one or both are impotent physically or psychologically; the husband was an a–hole and/or wife-beater from the start, etc. etc.

An annulment may not, repeat not, argue that there was love there at the start but which soured and died. There must not have been any affection at all at any time. What is that but a bunch of lies? What is that but institutionalized lying? What is that but hypocrisy?

(Wait, the original premise is that not all marriages are God-sent. Annulment is the answer to marriages that are infirm.)

Four, we are a country that bans divorce but accepts concubinage, which is just a fancy term for kabit. A term that not quite incidentally shows gender bias: A man has a kabit, he is guilty of concubinage, which is officially punishable by a fine and unofficially rewardable by the envy of peers. A woman has a kabit, she is guilty of adultery, which is officially punishable by jail, and unofficially so by having her kabit’s sexual organ pistol-whipped by her irate estranged husband who keeps an entire harem himself. You know the guy, he boasted about it.

(Acceptance does not make an act legal, moral or an institution. The inconsistencies of culture with regard to loving, sex and procreation does not justify divorce, it will rather further confuse people who are dichotomized — torn — between the inconvenience of morality and the easy fellowship of popular culture even if wrong.)

I’m almost tempted to say, I’ll agree to ban divorce if you agree to jail people who keep, indeed flout, their kabit. But that will keep Erap in prison for longer than 10 lifetimes.

(I don’t get it. What’s the use of using the power of the pen if we cannot upend popular culture? Jail Erap if we must, even in thought.  To our last dying breath, we must strive to do what is right, never, never surrender to what is wrong.)

Finally, divorce in fact is respectful of marriage in that it recognizes it enough to initiate a legal process to dissolve it. Opposing divorce is the best thing to discourage marriage, a thing the kids in particular are already shunning. Why bother getting married at all? Why get into a fix you can’t get out of? “Sapagkat tayo ay tao lamang,” Pilita Corrales’ song goes, except that you can’t cite that excuse in the courts.

(Why bother getting married at all if we have an out? C’mon. Columnists like this one have opposed our bipolar culture — religious dogma on one hand vs. conformity to what’s easy and convenient. So why stand in favor of a Divorce Law which will further entrench our confusion: get married, but you can get out anytime, say I love you, but with limits?)

In the end, that’s what makes the opposition to divorce silly even from its own perspective. It is counterproductive, it achieves the opposite of what it sets out to do, which is to defend the family as the foundation of this society. Of course who says you can’t have a family, and probably a more loving one, without marriage? The virtues of marriage more than those of sex have certainly been more convincingly argued to be overrated. The groups opposing divorce should drive it home even more convincingly, by showing the quality of mind they draw into their ranks.

Maybe they’re contributing something positive, if quite unwittingly, to life after all.

(Oh, okay. Let’s return to Jesus’s admoniton. If that is not quality thinking, what is?)

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A friend of mine since the late 70′s passed away as I was traveling to Naga city last week. She was fit, died of a heart attack at 63. The fragility of life and the suddenness of death encompasses all concepts and make us pause.

In Naga, I saw my high school classmates of forty years ago. Some looked like old leather, a bit wrinkled on the edges, but still smart and even better looking. Some are stroke survivors, a shadow of their former selves. Most of us still carried the same personalities:

This one hardly spoke. You have to coax him to volunteer information. He was in the vicinity of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2002. He has seen carnage and mayhem, being part of the medical service, but you have to draw him out. He’s like that. But he has an endearing personality. He is a living room couch, nice to relax with. Same guy, no change at all.

And then there’s this guy whose home was swamped by typhoon Ondoy. He has had other difficulties I am not at liberty to tell, but if I could, you wouldn’t believe his almost Job-like existence. But guess what? He’s still the ebulient person that he was in high school. If you didn’t know what he was going through, you would say he was at the pinnacle of success. He may have aged a bit, but the boy inside him still laughed at the world. You are astonished at his resilience.

In the end, it’s just you. You make your own world. The world doesn’t make you.

Some people are fixated on the end of the world. It doesn’t really matter much. Of course, if it does happen like the doomsayers warn, it’ll be quite a show. But you know what? In the end, it’s still you. You stand in front of God who will judge you when you die, and it doesn’t matter how your dying took place. It could be a strictly private affair, with no one watching, or it could be like a movie event with bells and whistles and all the cinematic effects thrown in for good measure. But it doesn’t matter much.

When I die, it’ll still be just me. The same baby, the same boy, the same young man, the same old man. The world as I know it ends when I die, and then I’ll be liable for judgment. The world continues to try to change me but the will to remain unchanged through the years gets stronger. Somehow, we have in us a chemical component that makes sure we do not change, just like a ship is made to stay afloat. God put something in us to make sure that He can reclaim the same soul, this according to Emmanuel V. Non, S.J. our high school religion teacher who gave a recollection on the first day of the reunion. What is He God for?

The same soul that God birthed to the world, who was leased to a mortal body is the same soul that God awaits in heaven. Now, tell me if that’s not good news enough.

Last weekend, Baby and I attended a conference of Kerygma. Kerygma is the umbrella organization which was born out of the magazine of the same name written and published by a Catholic Charismatic group under Bro. Bo Sanchez. Bo was a precocious child, starting his preaching ministry at age 14. At 18, he co-founded Anawim, a Catholic community in Montalban, Rizal which served the lost, the last and the least–urban poor who mostly earned their living recycling Metro Manila’s trash. Under Kerygma, he has published an assortment of magazines, devotionals and prayer books totaling 10 million copies reaching Filipinos at home and expatriates in 46 countries. The first activity was a Holy Mass which lasted for almost two hours. Fr. Jerry Orbos was the Mass celebrant. For his homily, Fr. Orbos introduced a girl named Fatima Soriano. Fatima has spiritual gifts. As a child growing in a town in Cavite, she would call her neighbors to pray the Holy Rosary everyday at 6 p.m. This pleased the priest and he wanted to meet the child. Fr. Orbos first talked to Fatima on the telephone:

“O Fatima, pwede ka bang pumunta dito sa radio station para ma-interview kita?” Fr. Orbos said.
“Hindi po pwede, Father.”
“Bakit naman?”
“Kasi po Father six times po ang dialysis ko araw-araw.”
Taken aback, the priest said:
“Eh, di, ako na lang ang pupunta dyan para mag-kita tayo.”
“Hindi rin po pwede, Father.”
“Bakit naman?”
“Eh, Father, bulag po kasi ako.”

So it came to pass that this girl who was reputed to have special gifts had kidney disease and was blind.

She eventually had a successful kidney transplant.

So, for that Mass, Fr. Orbos called Fatima to the stage, to stand behind the altar with a mic.

She was a stunner. She reminded me of Leah Salonga when she was still singing “Tomorrow, Tomorrow.” The same voice, the same smile, the same demeanor, the same style. Only, Fatima was blind.

She sang. She sang the song that won a Catholic Mass Media Award for Best Inspirational Original Song. The song basically said that all of us have our own suffering. That we should offer our suffering to the Lord, that we shouldn’t complain.

She was a stunner–visually and spiritually.

Finally, she said to the audience in a clear voice that “Mama Mary was there.” She was walking through the audience, embracing each one, Fatima said. “Mama Mary loves you,” she said.

My facial orifices were streaming. Tears and uhog. How could I complain at all, I thought, for the little inconveniences I have, when this girl has had a catastrophic disease and could not see, but she sang with the voice of an angel and smiled like Mary, in all humility, grace and blessedness?

Later on, after the event, I told Baby that I had a 1,111 experience. She did not react to what I said, maybe not knowing what I meant.

The following day, I repeated, “I had a 1,111 experience last night.” This time I proceeded to explain what I meant by “1,111.” When a kid has nasal mucus streaming down both nostrils, that’s “11.” So when you have nasal mucus and tears, that 1,111.

“Ah,” Maud said.

Baby and I drove her to Benilde, to get some admission forms. Our conversation was cut short because we were already on Taft avenue and they had to go down to the Admissions Office.

Right after they went down from the vehicle, I proceeded to check the time. I forgot to strap on my wrist watch, so I picked up my Nokia 3120 and looked at the time.

It was 11:11.

Wow! The exact same numbers I used! God was, is and will be there! God listens to our conversations! He is in the details of our lives! He blesses us with his presence! Like an ever loyal friend, He is all ears to what we say, not missing a single word, thought or deed, for He loves us to unimaginable heights (John 3:16).

Praise God!

Last weekend, Baby and I attended a conference of Kerygma. Kerygma is the umbrella organization which was born out of the magazine of the same name written and published by a Catholic Charismatic group under Bro. Bo Sanchez. Bo was a precocious child, starting his preaching ministry at age 14. At 18, he co-founded Anawim, a Catholic community in Montalban, Rizal which served the lost, the last and the least–urban poor who mostly earned their living recycling Metro Manila’s trash. Under Kerygma, he has published an assortment of magazines, devotionals and prayer books totaling 10 million copies reaching Filipinos at home and expatriates in 46 countries. The first activity was a Holy Mass which lasted for almost two hours. Fr. Jerry Orbos was the Mass celebrant. For his homily, Fr. Orbos introduced a girl named Fatima Soriano. Fatima has spiritual gifts. As a child growing in a town in Cavite, she would call her neighbors to pray the Holy Rosary everyday at 6 p.m. This pleased the priest and he wanted to meet the child. Fr. Orbos first talked to Fatima on the telephone:

“O Fatima, pwede ka bang pumunta dito sa radio station para ma-interview kita?” Fr. Orbos said.
“Hindi po pwede, Father.”
“Bakit naman?”
“Kasi po Father six times po ang dialysis ko araw-araw.”
Taken aback, the priest said:
“Eh, di, ako na lang ang pupunta dyan para mag-kita tayo.”
“Hindi rin po pwede, Father.”
“Bakit naman?”
“Eh, Father, bulag po kasi ako.”

So it came to pass that this girl who was reputed to have special gifts had kidney disease and was blind.

She eventually had a successful kidney transplant.

So, for that Mass, Fr. Orbos called Fatima to the stage, to stand behind the altar with a mic.

She was a stunner. She reminded me of Leah Salonga when she was still singing “Tomorrow, Tomorrow.” The same voice, the same smile, the same demeanor, the same style. Only, Fatima was blind.

She sang. She sang the song that won a Catholic Mass Media Award for Best Inspirational Original Song. The song basically said that all of us have our own suffering. That we should offer our suffering to the Lord, that we shouldn’t complain.

She was a stunner–visually and spiritually.

Finally, she said to the audience in a clear voice that “Mama Mary was there.” She was walking through the audience, embracing each one, Fatima said. “Mama Mary loves you,” she said.

My facial orifices were streaming. Tears and uhog. How could I complain at all, I thought, for the little inconveniences I have, when this girl has had a catastrophic disease and could not see, but she sang with the voice of an angel and smiled like Mary, in all humility, grace and blessedness?

Later on, after the event, I told Baby that I had a 1,111 experience. She did not react to what I said, maybe not knowing what I meant.

The following day, I repeated, “I had a 1,111 experience last night.” This time I proceeded to explain what I meant by “1,111.” When a kid has nasal mucus streaming down both nostrils, that’s “11.” So when you have nasal mucus and tears, that 1,111.

“Ah,” Maud said.

Baby and I drove her to Benilde, to get some admission forms. Our conversation was cut short because we were already on Taft avenue and they had to go down to the Admissions Office.

Right after they went down from the vehicle, I proceeded to check the time. I forgot to strap on my wrist watch, so I picked up my Nokia 3120 and looked at the time.

It was 11:11.

Wow! The exact same numbers I used! God was, is and will be there! God listens to our conversations! He is in the details of our lives! He blesses us with his presence! Like an ever loyal friend, He is all ears to what we say, not missing a single word, thought or deed, for He loves us to unimaginable heights (John 3:16).

Praise God!