(via Agence France-Presse) Marriage is losing its luster for many in the Philippines, with an increasing number of couples starting families out of wedlock, the government census office said on Friday.

More than 37 percent of the 1.78 million babies born in Asia’s Roman Catholic outpost in 2008 had unmarried mothers, it said in a statement, citing results of the latest population census.

This was 12.5 percent higher than the previous year, and compared with a 2.0 percent increase for all births, the census office said.

A growing number of Filipinos now treat marriage as an option, rather than a requirement, for starting families, said Nene Baligad, a member of a unit of the National Statistics Office that licenses people who officiate weddings.

“Nowadays, some couples just live in and only get married after having four or five children,” she told AFP.

“You can’t really say it’s for practical reasons, since you can be married on the cheap. It’s more like, we Filipinos tend to follow what is in fashion.”

Eight out of 10 Filipinos are Catholic, and the Philippines is one of only three territories in the world, along with Malta and the Vatican, where divorce remains illegal.

However the census showed that many couples were defying the nation’s powerful Catholic bishops by not only on having babies out of wedlock, but also by shunning church weddings.

Marriages either solemnized by the church or by government officials fell 0.7 percent to 486,514 in 2008, according to the census.

Just over a third of couples were married in Catholic ceremonies, while four in 10 chose civil rites officiated by a person licensed by the census office.

Manila couple Alvin Ruiz, 24, and his girlfriend, Joann Lopez, told AFP as they visited the Manila Zoo that they started living in together four years ago and now had a three-year-old son.

“Instead of spending for a wedding, we used the money to buy infant milk,” said Ruiz, who earns a living by buying used cooking oil from restaurants then selling them to companies that turn them into fuel for motor vehicles. [source]

(via CBCPnews.com) Pope Benedict XVI called on the Filipino bishops to strengthen the sacrament of matrimony especially among the young couples today.

As the Filipino culture is confronted with “secularism,” he said care must be given to showing young people the importance of the sacraments “as instrument of God’s grace and assistance.”

“This is particularly true of the sacrament of matrimony, which sanctifies married life from its beginning, so that God’s presence may sustain young couples in their struggles,” Benedict XVI said.

The pontiff made the statement during the “ad limina” visit of Bicol and Visayas bishops in Rome on February 18. It also came amid the declining Catholic marriages in the country.

An official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines earlier said that the number of church marriages dropped from 177,940 in 2008-2009 to just 166, 000 in 2010.

Fr. Melvin Castro, executive secretary of the CBCP’s Commission on Family and Life, said this was because Filipinos were marrying at a later age.

He said couples were also opting for civil marriages first before going for a “grand” church wedding.

Another church official of the CBCP’s National Appellate Matrimonial Tribunal also admitted before that the high cost of church weddings is deterring couples from getting married.

According to retired Archbishop Oscar Cruz, churches must encourage couples to have simple wedding rites instead or offer the sacrament for free.  For his part, retired Archbishop Oscar Cruz of the CBCP’s National Appellate Matrimonial Tribunal also admitted the high costs involved in holding church weddings is deterring couples from getting married.

Cruz said churches must encourage couples to have simple wedding rites instead or offer the sacrament for free.

(via catholicsentinel.org) The popularity of the U.S. bishops’ website for strengthening and supporting marriage, foryourmarriage.org, continued to grow in 2010. According to a report from Google Analytics, the website received nearly half a million visits, a 23-percent increase over 2009.

The website offers practical information and resources for married and engaged couples and people in serious dating relationships. In addition to articles on all stages of married life, the website features a daily marriage tip, blogs, quizzes, book reviews, and marriage in the news.

The report found that articles on preparing for a Catholic wedding are especially popular. For Your Marriage has extensive resources for engaged couples, including the texts of suggested wedding readings and commentaries. It also offers information about music, ceremony options, interfaith marriages, and “Ten Tips” for planning a memorable wedding.

According to the report, visitors came from 213 countries or territories. Significant numbers came from the United Kingdom, Australia, the Philippines and India. Visitors from Ireland increased 500 percent over 2009.

The For Your Marriage website was launched in 2007 as part of the Bishops’ National Pastoral Initiative for Marriage. Strengthening marriage and family life is one of the USCCB’s five priorities.

Here are some amusing photographs shared with us by Jayson & Jo Anne Arquiza.  The subject is Fr. Allen de Guzman — a priest in Caleruega who uses his iPad during the mass.  We were told that  he is one techie priest.  He uses his iPad as a visual aid for his homily and as a digital misalette to aid couples with their marriage vows.

The pictures below were taken on two separate occasions this year: the January 4 wedding of Jimmy + Christine Pajarillo; and January 15 wedding of Paul & Ria Hernandez.

Enjoy these photos:

Incidentally, there is already an iPad app called iBreviary which contains complete missal — containing all the spoken and sung parts during Mass throughout the liturgical year.  The application has been developed by Rev. Paolo Padrini, a consultant with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications. Although the app is not an official initiative of the Holy See, Vatican officials have previously praised the iBreviary as a novel way of evangelizing.

(via Inquirer.net) While the debate on the divorce bill rages in Congress, Catholic marriages in the country are on track for a record drop this year and the next, a Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) official said Saturday.

Fr. Melvin Castro, executive secretary of the CBCP Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, said that based on the Catholic Directory, the number of church marriages is set to drop from 177,940 in 2008-2009 to just 166,0000 this year and in 2011.

Castro said this was because Filipinos were marrying at a later age and couples were opting for civil marriages first before going for a “grand” church wedding.

“(The) trend is Filipinos are getting married at an older age unlike before when Filipinos would tie the knot when they’re still young,” said Castro in an interview over the Church’s Radio Veritas.

“Because those getting married are getting older, the number of people tying the knot in church is going down.”

He said that in the diocese of Tarlac, the number of those opting for civil marriages was “on the rise because it is free when you have it before the mayor.”  They later get married in church.

“It’s not because of the church fees but because as Filipinos they want to prepare for a church wedding. Filipinos are very particular that they have a grand church wedding so they postpone it,” Castro said.

He said the Church had also noticed a “glaring phenomenon” of more and more Filipino women marrying foreigners.

“We have a glaring phenomenon of so many interracial marriages involving Filipinas. Maybe foreigners are really falling in love with Filipinas. So it’s interracial and, more often than not, (it’s) a mixed marriage with the man having a different religion,” Castro said.

“In several instances, the groom would convert and get baptized in the Church but that is discouraged—to convert just for the sake of marriage,” he said.

Castro said Filipino women entering into interracial marriages was a “phenomenon” happening not just in the country but also in the large Filipino communities abroad.

“You will also notice this abroad where there are really many Filipinos getting married, either with a fellow Filipino or with somebody from another race,” he said.