THE MARRIAGE ACT.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 329, 16 October 1908, Page 6

THE MARRIAGE ACT.

e At last Tuesday's meeting of the Anglican Synod in Auckland one of the clergy present took occasion, in moving a resolution in censure of the enlarged facilities for obtaining a divorce, to condemn the provisions of the Marriage Act which legalise marriage with a deceased wife's sister. This must have been read with some surprise by those who are awaro that the recent Lambeth Conference, in disappointment of the wishes of some over-ardent churchmen, declined to pass any hostile judgment on the new British Act validating these marriages. It must be assumed that the Conference certainly would havo done this had it considered that marriage with a deceased wife's sister, solemnised in accordance with the law of the land, was still sinful, and the parties to it, in the ecclesiastical eye, "open and notorious evil-livers" according to the rubric. It is true that by withholding an "adequate and general judgment" on the point, the Conference might bo supposed to have left unfettered the right of any minister to hold and express the views expressed at the Auckland Synod. But it happens that an authoritative ecclesiastical judgment has been delivered, in a case that is worth noting for the important points which it raised and which were settled. Last year a'lay churchman in the diocese of Norwich announced to his vicar that he intended to proceed to Canada to marry his deceased wife's sister. He .was warned by tho vicar that in such a case he would not be admitted to Holy Communion, and the Bishop of Norwich sustained the vicar's action. The parishioner then instituted a suit in the Court of Arches, and towards tho end of July lr.st the Dean of Arches, Sir Lewis Dibdin, delivered a judgment in which the vicar, being held not to have justified his action, was admonished to refrain from similar acts in future. The duty of tho Court resolved itself into the one question whether members of the Church of England who have contracted ft marriage which is perfectly lawful, according to tho law of tho lund,

may bo cxcommunicated by tho Church and branded as "open and notorious evil-livers." The point; at issue, therefore, was a conflict betweon ecclesiastical law and opinion on the one hand and public morality and opinion on the other. And it is this issue which was raised by the Auckland synodsman's attack upon the Marriage Act. The Dean of Arches said in the kernel of his long judgment: "My duty is confined towards ascertaining whether thoso who havo contracted such a marriago arc open and notorious evil-livers and are offending the public conscience by their evil' life. Taking the fullest account of the limiting words of the statute, and putting at its highest the divergence between tho action of tho State and tho rule of tho Church, I find it impossible to say that these persons, lawfully married according to tho law of the land, can by any reasonable use of language be so described merely because thoy are living together as man and wife." It was not suggested on behalf of the vicar that his parishioners really regarded the parties to the action as "open and notorious evil-livers." Indeed, ho expressly guarded himself from using the words in any but an ecclesiastical sense, for ho must have felt, as tho Court of Arches felt, that his parishioner had committed no sin. It is this discord between the ecclesiastical formula and the moral senso and charity of a Christian that doubtless restrained the Lambeth Conference from insisting that ecclesiastical penalties should be applied to lawful marriages. There is no 7 thing to be gained, therefore, by belated denunciations of the civil law relating to marriages,' and it is to be regretted that any minister sh6uld regard tho law validating marriage with a deceased wife's sister as a blow at tho sanctity of the marriage tie. That law is quite different in spirit, and effect from any divorce law. Nobody will object to the strong stand taken by the Synod against the increase of facilities for divorce, but it is only proper to remember that while Parliament lately extended these facilities in the direction of making confirmed lunacy a ground of divorce, it has also closed up the loophole of escape improperly afforded by tho old farcical provisions respecting tho "restitution of conjugal-rights."