BISHOP'S ADVICE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 5, 7 January 1938, Page 10

BISHOP'S ADVICE.

MARRIAGE AFTER DIVORCE.

RELIEF TO AGGRIEVED PARTY.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON". December 11

The Bishop of Birmingham (Dr. Barnes), in hie address last night to the Birmingham Diocesan Conference, discussed the Matrimonial Causes Act. He said that all deeply deplored the necessity for divorce: but there were time* when the behaviour of husband or wire made the marriage tie intolerable, and the clergy could not. as Christian people—or so it seemed to him —refuse relief to the aggrieved partner. He belie\ed that theie were times when the Church might rightly bless a second marriage contracted after divorce, and he was shocked by the lack of social understanding shown in the debate in the Church Assembly. He admitted that the existence of collusion, of constructive perjury, had made it at time* difficult to distinguish between guilt and innocence, though it was generally believed that the new legislation would end much that had been amiss.

Meanwhile he advised that the clergy refuse a second marriage, the former partner being still alive, to any person because of who«e apparent adultery the first marriage was dissolved. If such a person stated that his or her adultery was fictitious, remarriage should none the le** be refused: perjury was a grave sin. If freedom had been obtained from a lunatic partner, that partner ought not to be remarried in church: the clergy could not a<* Christians bless a union which would probably produce lunatics. One whose act of desertion had led to a divorce ought not to be remarried in church. But. in hi* opinion, the genuinely innocent partner to a divorce, who was free from mental taint, might rightly have a second marriage ble**ed by the Church. He *aw no objection to the u*e 111 such a case of such modified forms of the Prayer Book service as were common. At the Sudor and Man Diocesan Conference the Bishop (Dr. Stanton .Tonesi de;ilt with the Divorce Bill now before the Manx Legi*lature. He said that, the law in England led lo abuse* which could no iongt r be tolerated, but those abuses did not obtain in the Isle of Man. and there was no urgent need for the bill. Young people in these day* seemed to enter upon matrimonv with a kind of undefined consciousness at the back of their minds that the marriage could be dissolved. If that conception became widespread it would undermine | the foundation* of our home life.

Hp weWmied a proposed amendment to the liil! providing for the setting up of a reconciliation committee to interview the parties before an application for divorce was made to tlie Court. He laid it down as a rule of the diocese that, where any person who had been divorced desired to remarry, the ceremony should not take place in the parish church.