MIXED MARRIAGES.

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 96, 23 April 1924, Page 6

MIXED MARRIAGES.

R.C. BISHOP'S ACTION. CATHEDRAL CELEBRATION REFUSED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, March 11. The Lenten pastoral letters of R.C. Bishops arc obtaining much Press notice just now. They are, so it strikes a dispassionate observer, much more definitely linked to the realities of life than are similar pronouncements from Protestant sources. Dr. Dunn, R.C. Bishop, of Nottingham, in his Lenten letter protests against the increase of mixed marriages in his diocese. In 1922 out of a total of 482 marriages only 245 were Catholic, but there were no less than 315 mixed marriages as against 228 Catholic ones in 1923. To check this the Bishop has ordered that from next Holy Saturday the chancel of the Cathedral will no longer be available for mixed marriages. Such I marriages may take place at the altar in any of the other chapels except that of the Blessed Sacrament, which is altogether forbidden to be used for any except Catholic marriages. If the number of guests should require that the nave be used, the priest must stand outside th ecommunion rail and have the gates closed behind him. The organ may be played, while the guests arc assembling, and also when the bride and bridegroom are leaving the church, but on no account at any time during the service itself. There must be neither flowers nor lighted candles on the altar, and the priest must not wear any ecclesiastical vestment over his black cassock except a purple stole. Civing his reasons for these drastic regulations, Bishop Dunn says that if only young men and maidens intending matrimony should pause for a moment beforehand and ask themselves whether there is anything at all which might | tend in the future to mar perfect harmony between them and their proposed partners, they would see that nothing is more sure to breed discord than disagreement upon religion.