Making Divorce Possible

Only eight major nations in the world, all Catholic, do not allow divorce. They are Italy, Spain, Ireland, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Paraguay. Of the eight, the one closest to ending its prohibition is the home of the church it self. Italy's Chamber of Deputies last week began full debate on a bill that would allow civil divorce for one of seven reasons. Parliamentary observers predict that the bill will pass, probably before the end of the year.

Divorces have been difficult to obtain in Italy since ancient times. Ac cording to legend, Romulus authorized them for Roman men for only three wifely misdeeds: adultery, child poisoning, or changing the lock on the bed room door. The Emperor Justinian was seemingly easier. He allowed divorce by mutual consent, but there was a catch-22. The divorcees were expected to take a lifelong vow of chastity. Caesar dallied with Cleopatra on the Nile but could never marry her, presuming he had wanted to, because there was Calpurnia back at home, and she was above suspicion and therefore un-divorceable.

In the past century, ten divorce bills have been introduced in Parliament, but none ever got out of committee. Under the 1929 Concordat between Mussolini and the Vatican, the law was even tightened. Up to that time, foreign divorces had been recognized, giving wealthier Italians an escape hatch. The Concordat abolished this exception, and slammed shut the hatch.

Extramarital Relationships. Blocked at home and abroad for 40 years, Italians have had no release from unhappy marriages except separation or complicated, costly and time-consuming annulment by the Vatican. Even so, an estimated 2,500,000 people are presently separated from their spouses; of these, one-third have made more or less permanent extralegal arrangements. Writer Gabriella Parca, author of a much-discussed book on the predicament (I Separati), estimates that "no fewer than 5,000,000 people [one-tenth of Italy's population] are involved in the drama of indissolubility and suffer its consequences." The total includes those separated, mistresses and illegitimate children.

The most famous unmarrieds in recent years, of course, were Carlo Ponti and Sophia Loren; Ponti eventually became a French citizen in order to marry her. Film Director Michelangelo Antonioni and Actress Monica Vitti lived in separate apartments with a connecting interior staircase, until Antonioni won an annulment and the two were married. In less sophisticated circles, extramarital relationships are also common and accepted. "You want to know which of your friends are living together," says a Milan doctor, "not for gossip or to spread scandal, but to know how to address invitations to your parties."

For others, the lack of divorce laws works a greater hardship. One girl married at 20 only to discover that her musician-groom was impotent. She has spent the past six years petitioning the Vatican's marriage court for an annulment. Until the Sacred Rota finally decides her case, she must avoid any relationship that would destroy the only evidence on which her plea rests: her virginity. A woman married her brother-in-law after her husband was declared dead in World War II and bore her second spouse two children. When the first husband reappeared unexpectedly, he became not only her legal husband again --the second marriage was invalidated --but also, under Italian law, the father of the children. The family decided to live together in a cozy menage a trois in which the woman was married to the first man, a legless veteran, but cohabited with the second.

The present divorce bill introduced by Deputy Loris Fortuna, 45, a happily married Socialist, would "moralize the existing situation." Fortuna's grounds for divorce are impotence, incurable mental illness, a lengthy prison term, exploitation of wife or daughter for prostitution, attempted murder by one's spouse, desertion or a five-year separation. Opponents deride the measure as a "patente di Casanova" or a Casanova's lovemakmg license. Fortuna contends that the lovemaking already occurs and his bill would sanctify common-law situations.

United Front. Aware that the trend of public sentiment is toward the bill, the Vatican in its eleventh battle against a divorce law is making less of a direct attack. In a shrewd maneuver, the church and pro-Vatican Christian Democrats have mounted a campaign largely aimed at wives. "Pay attention," says a street poster. "If the divorce law passes, your husband, when he happens to lose his head over a girl younger than you, can leave the house, ask for a separation and after five years move on to a new marriage whether you like it or not." One group unimpressed by such arguments: Italy's 500,000 "white widows," women whose husbands went to other countries to work, got divorced and remarried abroad, leaving them helpless under the law to start new married lives of their own.

In Parliament, Socialists, Communists, Proletarian Socialists, Republicans and Liberals are for the first time united behind the divorce bill. Test votes show them narrowly victorious over Christian Democrats and smaller right-wing opponents. Though 101 Christian

Democrats have signed up 'to speak against the bill, Chamber President Alessandro Pertini has announced that "we will divorce ourselves from our summer vacation" unless progress is prompt. Since no one wants to remain in Rome in August, the Deputies are expected to approve the bill late next month. The Senate will then be able to act on it after the August break.

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