Mr. Duterte is famous for disdaining dress codes, traditional diplomacy and religious dogma. This spring, he went on an expletive-ridden rant against the Catholic Church, accusing it of hypocrisy, corruption and immorality, and of meddling in politics. Mr. Duterte called the presidential election a “public referendum” between the bishops and himself. While most candidates were busy wooing powerful religious groups, he declared being “open” to legalizing same-sex marriage.

So far, however, his public position on divorce has seemed more conservative. Although his own first marriage was annulled, he has said, “You don’t have to love your wife to live together,” and “I’m not in favor of divorce for the sake of the children.”

On July 20, I asked Mr. Duterte’s longtime adviser Jesus Melchor Quitain, now special assistant to the president, about that statement and the new divorce bill. Mr. Quitain said that Mr. Duterte had made the remark “off the cuff” and that it didn’t reflect his official position. The president had yet to review the bill, Mr. Quitain said, and he is “open” to divorce.

When I asked about pressure from the Catholic Church, Mr. Quitain said Mr. Duterte was “a stickler for the separation of church and state” and that “he will not allow himself to be pressured by anyone or by any group.”

But what about the lawmakers who actually have to pass the divorce bill?

That the 2012 Reproductive Health Law was even passed signaled a drop in the Church’s influence over politicians. And waning church attendance suggests that organized religion is losing in popularity overall.

But Senator Pia Cayetano, who supports the divorce bill, says many of her fellow legislators still feel pressured: It’s easier for ordinary citizens to support divorce in anonymous surveys than for lawmakers to do so openly and risk the clergy’s wrath. In the past, priests have taken to their pulpits to lambast politicians. The conference of bishops even suggested once the possibility of excommunicating then-President Benigno S. Aquino III.

“Everyone should now understand that the deception is not over. The devil is at work. We are right at the center,” he said. “Those who pass this law will face the judgment of God.”

Mr. Lagman, the new divorce bill’s sponsor, cleverly casts the stakes of the law in religious terms. “Most marriages are supposed to be solemnized in heaven,” he has said, but “many marriages plummet into hell — in irremediable breakdown, spousal abuse, marital infidelity and psychological incapacity.” When will the Catholic Church realize that sins greater than the ones it condemns are committed every day because unhappy Filipinos don’t have the right to divorce?