NE TEMERE DECREE

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 233, 28 June 1922, Page 5

NE TEMERE DECREE

CHALLENGE TO NEW ZEALAND LAW “PRIESTS WILL TREAT IT WITH CONTEMPT” ASSERTION MADE IN SYDNEY By TELEGRAPH— ASSOCIATION. —COPYRIGHT. (Rec. June 27, 10.15 p.m.) Sydney, June 27. The Ne Temere decree controversy has been revived. Captain Chaplain Wilson, who has just returned from a visit to New Zealand, addressing a gathering in the Lyceum Hall, statedthat Mr. Massey had assured ;him that the Ne Temere decree had been made inoperative in the Dominion as the outcome of recent amendments of the Marriage Act. Captain Wilson added that Mr. Massey not only denied that the amendments of the Marriage Act were being flouted by a section, but emphasised the point that anyone flouting them would bo dealt with irrespective of creed br station. Father Forrest, of the Sacred Heart Monastery, Kensington, in a letter to the Press, replying to Captain Wilson, says: ‘‘l now flatly and categorically deny this ridiculous assertion of Mr. Massey’s. A thousand enactments of any State Parliament cannot render inoperative a law that the Catholic Church imposes upon her members. The No Temere decree is still in full force in New Zealand.” Father Forrest declares that a priest who recently returned from New Zealand assured him that he personally broke “the stupid New Zealand amendment of the Marriage Act,” as did scores of other priests. Father Forrest adds that the priests of New Zealand “intend to treat this absurd law with supreme contempt, and no one knows better than the Prime Minister that it is beyond his power to enforce it.”—Press Assn.