China's Ministry of Civil Affairs recently reported a saddening statistic: in 2011, the number of couples filing for divorce passed two million for the first time. The figure has been rising since 2003, when an amendment to the Marriage Registration Ordinance simplified divorce procedures. It also made it cheap to obtain, which has been cited as a major reason for the divorce rate jump. Other factors include the increasing incidence of couples living apart for work reasons, an increasing acceptance of extra-marital affairs and the country's negative birth rate. With divorce becoming increasingly commonplace, younger people are seeing marriage less and less as a lifetime commitment, which can only add to the difficulties that the Church in China already has. Its implacable opposition to divorce finds little favor with young people and hardens their widely held perceptions that it is “too conservative” and even “inhumane.” Conversations with a group of post-1980s singles in Shenzhen, a city with a large, shifting population of young migrant workers, typify the newly emerging attitudes. "People get married instantly and divorced instantly," says 25-year-old designer Maria Liu. "And Catholics are not immune," she adds. "Even though some of them don't get divorced, they have extra-marital affairs. I'm fearful of marriage, having seen members of my family get separated." Maria Zhuang shares the same opinion and speaks from experience when she says “most divorce cases are caused by extra-marital affairs. It's hard to stop that just by faith alone.” A married man, who identifies himself only as John, poses a question: “If two people are in so much pain from staying together, why doesn't God's love allow them to separate and regain freedom?” Joseph Peng, an organizer of match-making activities, says that some young people set standards for their future partners that could be impossibly high. “They demand that their partners are young and pretty, with a stable income and even a car and apartment,” he says. Joseph Wang, a Catholic, also believes that the rise of materialism is making modern marriage more vulnerable. “People are more and more pragmatic," he says. "If you have money they will stay with you and if you don’t, they will go away." He adds that “even some priests have moral problems, it's not just us laypeople. I don't think the Church can offer a lot of help." Focusing more on the Church's role in preventing divorce, Paul Chen feels that marriage counseling is often either insufficient or too simple. "Some parishes don't have any counseling program and some priests don't even interview couples before blessing a marriage," he says. Father Roger Liu Zhe of Beijing diocese, a moral theology teacher, accepts most of these young people's criticisms. "The Church stresses marriage is inseparable and forever, but its voice in today's society is too weak," he says. “There's only one class about marriage in the catechism course that people take. And when they give their homilies, most priests only explain about the Gospel.” However, he feels that parents could share more responsibility and that the one-child-one-family syndrome is partly to blame for the growth in divorce. "Parents nowadays dote on their children rather than remind them about commitments in life such as marriage," he says. "In today’s family, a kid is taken care of by two parents and four grandparents. In general, this gives them little sense of sharing and tolerance; they think everyone should be nice to them." Related stories Non-Catholics welcome to matchmaking dayMigrant workers face unmarried futures
