Pope Decries Argentine Divorce Bill, Calls Marriage Vows Vital

Pope John Paul II stepped forthrightly into Argentina’s most inflamed controversy Wednesday, urging Catholics to fight against a liberal new divorce law and warning that people who cannot keep their marriage vows cannot be trusted to keep any other social, business or patriotic commitment.

Barnstorming through northwest Argentina on the ninth day of his two-week pilgrimage to South America, the pontiff bluntly tried to rally public support in the divorce dispute, which has strained church-state relations in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country.

In a strongly worded sermon before a crowd estimated by police at 400,000 worshipers here in Argentina’s third-largest city, John Paul told the faithful to “oppose . . . with your word and your example” political moves that would “damage genuine matrimonial and familial love.”

Argentina’s church hierarchy has bitterly protested an unprecedented divorce law that already has passed the lower house of the legislature and is considered virtually certain of final approval by the country’s Senate. The Senate action has been diplomatically put off until after the Pope’s visit to avoid marring his otherwise non-controversial mission to this country.

Public support of the measure, which would bring Argentine law into line with that of most countries of the world, is widespread, with polls showing 78% to 80% of Argentine adults in favor of the divorce measure.

But church leaders have responded fiercely, charging the young democratic government of President Raul Alfonsin with moral laxity and “vices.”

Although the Pope frequently denounces divorce as sinful in the eyes of the church, his speech in Cordoba marked the first time in the memories of members of his entourage that he has drawn an analogy between keeping marriage vows and fulfilling workaday contracts and commitments.

“There are those who dare to negate and even ridicule the idea of a faithful commitment for all of life,” the pontiff said, almost scornfully.

“How, with that hypothesis, could one continue to require of a man loyalty to his fatherland, to labor agreements, to the fulfillment of laws and contracts?”

Focusing on the allegations of moral laxity made by his Argentine bishops, John Paul said, “It is not strange at all that the spread of divorce in a society is accompanied by a diminishing of public morality in all sectors.” He stressed the sanctity of marriage and pointedly recited the traditional Catholic wedding vows, adding extra stress on the bride and groom’s promise to love and respect one another “all the days of my life.”

“True love does not exist if it is not faithful,” said the Pope in flawless Spanish. “And it cannot exist if it is not honest. Neither can it be in the concrete vocation of matrimony if there is no full promise that lasts until death. Only indissoluble matrimony will be firm and lasting support for the familial community.”

John Paul also restated the church’s traditional ban on artificial birth control and, in an apparent reference to abortion, condemned what he characterized as the “anti-birth attitude” that has spread through modern society.

Argentine journalists accompanying the papal party on a taxing 60-hour flying cavalcade to eight widely scattered cities outside Buenos Aires, the capital, said they doubt that John Paul’s words will slow passage of the divorce bill because of its wide popularity in this country, which has never before permitted divorce.

Said one Buenos Aires businessman who had paused to hear the Pope while on a sales trip to Cordoba, “They could bring 10 Popes to Argentina, but they’re not going to change our minds.”