Land of No Divorce

In most Western nations divorce is legal on grounds of adultery or desertion; various countries have also permitted divorce for sundry other reasons: attending the theater, conspiring against the government, gambling, apostasy, vagrancy, ill humor at the breakfast table. Brazil has always prohibited-divorce for any reason whatever. Its constitution makes a legal marriage an-indissoluble contract.

Last week, in the Congress at Rio, Deputy Nelson Carneiro argued for a bill which would punch a loophole in the constitution by providing annulments for incompatibility--under strict controls. The impossibility of legally ending a marriage, he believed, was the root of intolerable matrimonial tangles in Brazil. At every pause in his 98-page speech, Carneiro was rebutted by a sharp-witted Roman Catholic priest, Monsignor Arruda Camara, who is also a Deputy. Monsignor Arruda held out against the slightest relaxation of the constitutional provision. Cried he to Carneiro: "Where the constitution says 'marriage is an indissoluble tie,' Your Excellency says 'dissoluble.' Where the constitution says 'no,' Your Excellency says 'yes.'"

In arguing for loosening the law, Carneiro had in mind the evasions which estranged Brazilians have practiced for years. The rich are frequently divorced and remarried abroad. Those who cannot afford to travel often get Uruguayan and Mexican divorces through Rio lawyers. Other Brazilians separated from their spouses simply move a new "wife" into the house without any semblance of divorce or new marriage. This happens even in top society. A decade ago, Francisco Campos, a cabinet minister, split from his wife and living with another woman, offered a bril liant formal reception, held his mistress' arm, and announced, "From now on our friends will consider us married." The friends did.

Because Brazil is 95% Roman Catholic, the disagreement over divorce was within the religious family. Carneiro himself is a Catholic. He and those who favor his annulment plan simply see a distressing picture of Brazil's matrimonial affairs and propose a cure--legal annulments after five years of legal separation. Those who oppose divorce say that "if it is bad without divorce, it would be worse with it." The church points to relatively successful divorceless societies in Argentina and Colombia, remembers that it fought down divorce proposals in Brazil in 1937 and 1946. Bishop Vicente Scherer of the state of Rio Grande do Sul called for "prayers to God to take away from Brazil the calamity which threatens Christian families." Defeat seemed likely for Carneiro's bill.

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