Judicial intervention: Christian divines assail high court order

Ecclesiastical representatives say court overstepped jurisdiction

LAHORE: Ecclesiastical representatives have aired strong reservations regarding a recent Lahore High Court (LHC) order “relaxing” grounds for divorce.

They said the judgment contradicted the Holy Bible. The representatives pledged to resist the move. They revealed that a conference would be organised on June 13 in Lahore to formulate recommendations and agree on a unanimous line of action. Justice Mansoor Ali Shah of the LHC had recently restored Section-7 of the Christian Divorce Act.

Hanooq Haq, pastor in-charge of Nabha Road’s St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church said the Bible only permitted divorce in the event of adultery. He said a judge had no authority to rule on theological matters. Haq said the Christian Church had always strived to keep families together. But, he said, the order would wreak havoc on Christian families. Haq said the Christian Church also had the power to annul marriages if a couple failed to reconcile after living separately for seven years.



Lahore Cathedral Dean Shahid Mairaj said Christianity saw holy matrimony as the lifelong union of one man, one woman. He said at the time of getting married, a Christian couple pledged to remain together till death parted them. This, Mairaj said, was a basic Biblical rule. He said that while former president Ziaul Haq had not taken the Christian community into confidence before inserting Section-7 in the Act, it was completely in accordance with the Bible.

Father Joseph Shahzad, the Sacred Heart Cathedral pastor, said the development may have come in the wake of efforts by some self-styled churches. He said some people had established churches in homes where they traded marriage certificates for money against the tenets of Christianity. Shahzad said such individuals might have misled the court.

He said the order, if implemented, would constitute an insult to the Bible and those who acted in accordance with it would be guilty of blaspheming. Shahzad said the Christian community would never accept it.

Naulakha Church Pastor In-charge Majid Abel said only the Christian Church had the power to rule on marriages. He said a conference would be convened soon to formulate a response to remedy the situation.

Pakistan Christian Congress president Nazir Bhatti said the move would imperil Christian life and identity nationwide. He said he had been left stunned by the order as an LHC division bench, headed by the then chief justice, had earlier delivered a verdict saying that the court could only interpret the law on his 1998 petition seeking the blasphemy laws to be repealed. Bhatti said this demonstrated that an LHC single bench had crossed the line when it came to the Christian Divorce Act.

The LHC had delivered the judgment on the petition of a Christian man. The petitioner had told the court that he wanted to divorce his wife without alleging adultery. He had said that he would be compelled to do this under the then prevalent law. This was something, the petitioner had said, he did not want to do.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 5^th, 2016.