"NE TEMERE" DECREE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 154, 30 June 1911, Page 5

"NE TEMERE" DECREE.

PROHIBITIVE LEGISLATION DEMANDED. (Received 10.5 a.m.) MELBOURNE, this day. The agitation concerning the Ne Teme.re Decree is assuming a new character. The emphatic protests are giving place to a demand for prohibitive legislation.

A joint manifesto was recently agreed to by, and officially signed on behalf of, the non-Roman Catholic Churches of Victoria. The denominations represented are the Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, Lutherans, Welsh Calvinists, Society of Friends, and the Salvation Army. Exception was taken to the decree on the following grounds: 1. The decree presumes to declare not valid marriages between Roman Catholic and non-Roman Catholic subjects of this State —celebrated in accordance with civil law and against which no Divine law, whether natural or positive and revealed, is or can be alleged—if only a specified Roman Catholic priest be not present as a witness to the mutual consent of the parties.

2. The decree thereby unwarrantably interferes with the proper liberty of certain subjects of this State, -who are declared incapable of contracting a valid marriage without the presence of a Roman Catholic priest.

3. The decree interferes also in the matter of what is sufficient evidence for a marriage contract, which is properly a civil matter to be provided for by civil law.

4. [The decree exalts the variable regulations of a particular ecclesiastical discipline to a level with the unchangeable moral law of God in determining what marriages are valid.

5. Such a decree is contrary to public policy, and inimical to domestio peace and social welfare (a) in that it subjects Bon-Koman Catholic parties to marriage contracts sanctioned by civil law, and against which no Divine law is, or cau be alleged, along with their Roman Catholic partners in the marriages, to the grievous imputation on the part of the Roman Catholic Church of being not truly married, and, consequently, living in concubinage, so that their children are not born in true wedlock and (b) in that it incites Roman Catholic partners in such marriages to repudiate the obligations resting on lawfully married persons.