By IPS Correspondents
SANTIAGO, Oct 13 2003 (IPS)

Chile should have a new law making divorce legal before the end of the year, despite the fierce resistance of the Roman Catholic Church, which has made this the only country in the Americas, and one of the only countries in the world, where divorce is still banned.

Although final passage of the law is considered a sure thing, the Church is fighting up to the end.

Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz, the archbishop of Santiago, was recently forced to withdraw one of the ads in a controversial anti-divorce campaign that the Church is airing on network television.

The first ad in the series cited a study by the conservative Washington D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, which presented statistics that backed the argument that the children of divorced parents in the United States were more likely to use drugs and alcohol, to be involved in crime, to lie, and to be poor.

The ad drew criticism, from society at large as well as from within the Church. A letter published in the press by Jesuit priest Felipe Berríos, chaplain for the ”A Roof for Chile” movement, triggered a heated debate within the Church.

The spot was eventually withdrawn, and Errázuriz even issued a public apology.

The campaign is aimed at pressuring lawmakers to add restrictions to the divorce bill – an amended version of the Civil Matrimony Law.

For example, it wants couples – regardless of religion – to be forced to choose whether or not their marriage will include the option to divorce, before they are even married.

A Senate commission is putting the final touches to the bill, which is slated for approval after a number of unsuccessful attempts to legalise divorce in this Southern Cone country of 16 million.

The bill began to make even faster progress on its journey through Congress in August, when the Senate approved it by a vote of 33 to 13, and the centre-left coalition government of moderate socialist President Ricardo Lagos asked Congress to give it priority treatment, which means the legislature will have 30 days to vote on the final version.

The last details to be ironed out include aspects like how many years a couple must be separated before they can be legally divorced, whether or not divorce can be granted if it is requested by only one of the spouses, and whether or not couples should have the choice to renounce their right to divorce when they are getting married.

Senators of the co-governing Christian Democratic Party (PDC) said that once the final modifications are introduced, the bill will speed through the rest of the process.

The way things stand now, couples wishing to dissolve a marriage so they can remarry take advantage of a legal loophole, under which a judge can annul a marriage. The usual system is for a husband and wife to swear in court that they were married in the wrong jurisdiction, not the one where they were living at the time.

Thousands of couples are granted annulments every year. But the lawyer fees are higher than the poor can afford.

Nevertheless, the Church has not let up. Under the slogan ”Chile wants a united family; let’s not divide (divorce) it”, the ads began to be aired on Sep. 19.

In the letter that was sent to the press after it was read by Archbishop Errázuriz and Family Vicar Jaime Fernández, Jesuit priest Berríos said the campaign stigmatised the children of divorced couples, and that the Church should apologise.

Other Jesuits and Salesians also disagreed with the way the archbishop’s office decided to express its discrepancies with the divorce law.

Errázuriz himself ended up publicly stating early this month that the Catholic Church had committed errors in its televised campaign, and that some children of separated parents may have felt stigmatised.

He also admitted that the aim of the ads was to influence the parliamentary debate on the divorce law.

The first spot was withdrawn, and the two following ones, which emphasise the aspects of the law that will supposedly undermine family stability, and underscore the purported benefits of binding marriages that cannot be dissolved, went on the air ahead of schedule.

But Errázuriz and several priests clarified that there were no discrepancies within the Church, that no member of the clergy was in favour of legalised divorce, and that there were merely differences regarding the best way to express the Church’s position towards the proposed divorce law.

PDC lawmakers on the parliamentary commission that is finetuning the bill said the Church’s strategy would not affect the final outcome, because the bill has already made it through a vote in each house of Congress, and lawmakers are not likely to change their minds because of a few TV ads.

One PDC legislator criticised the Church’s use of ”statistics taken from a study carried out in a reality that is completely different from Chile’s, a strategy that ended up being somewhat counter-productive.”

Parliamentary Deputy María Antonieta Saa of the co-governing Party for Democracy described the Church’s campaign as ”extremist, overly simplistic and stigmatising for the children of divorced parents.”

She said the campaign ”has not only failed to contribute anything positive to the debate, but provides data that does not correspond to reality, while waging a campaign of terror to fight what is already a fait accompli.”

Nevertheless, the minister of the National Women’s Service, Cecilia Pérez, said the controversial ad had one merit: it ”proposed a broader debate, a citizen debate that cuts across society.

”This is something that is normally discussed in the bosom of the family and the privacy of the home,” she added.

Pérez underlined the importance of ”being sincere with ourselves about our social reality…and the need for a new law,” and called on Chileans ”not to be distracted by realities that perhaps have little to do with ours, when we have enough reality in Chile to justify concern with the issue of marriage and the family.”

The executive director of the Family Foundation, Nuria Núñez, concurred with the minister, saying ”the campaign opened the issue up to public debate and trotted out all of the scare stories, myths and mistaken ideas about divorce.”

Both Pérez and Núñez recognised the right of the Catholic Church to express its viewpoint and defend the institution of marriage – a right that forms part of democracy, which was restored after 17 years of dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

An adviser to the right-wing Independent Democratic Party, Jorge Reyes, agreed with that view. ”It seems to me that they are exercising the Church’s right to discuss the issue.”

He also said the ads had a ”positive” impact on public opinion, because ”so far, the only criticism has been that people may have felt offended, but no one has shown that the statistics are incorrect, which in my view is relevant.” (EMD/IPS/LA/PR-CR/TRA-SO SW/MDE/DM/03)

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