Nuestro D-I-V-O-R-C-I-O se finaliza hoy.

[Please excuse the above translation of the Tammy Wynette song.]

It seems that Chile is on the verge of legalizing divorce. Currently, staunchly Catholic Chile, Malta, and the Phillipines are among the few countries that have no legal divorce.

I spent a year as a student in Chile ten years ago. At that time, I was puzzled by the fact the Chile had no legal divorce. Ten years later, I have nothing but respect for Chile's upholding of Chirst's teaching on marriage.

I am reminded of something related to this that I saw today on another blog, Flos Carmeli, regarding the issue of divorce. C. Everett Koop is talking about C.S. Lewis:

C.S. Lewis shocked many people in his day when he came out in favor of making divorce legal, on the grounds that we Christians have no right to impose our morality on society at large. Although he would preach against it, and oppose it on moral grounds, he recognized the distinction between morality and legality.

While I hate to disagree with C.S. Lewis, I believe that we Christians have the right and the responsibility "to impose our morality on society at large," in a loving, charitable, and Christ-like way, of course. Are not all laws an imposition of morality?

All societies regulate marriage. A man is not legally allowed to take two wives in Christian societies. What is different from not legally allowing him to dissolve his marriage to take a second wife? We proscribe polygamy but practice serial monogamy.

In Chile, I knew of many men who had left their wives and taken up with mistresses. No law can really hope to change human behavior. Forced virtue is not virtue. Nevertheless, society reserves the right to set standards of behavior.

I have heard it said that "a good society is one that allows for its people to be good." We can't say that about most modern societies as they stand today.