DIVORCE

Evening Post, Issue 9, 10 July 1936, Page 3

DIVORCE

CHURCH ATTITUDE

SACRAMENT PROBLEMS

VARIETY OF OPINION

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, May 30.

A request is to be made to th» Archbishop of Canterbury to appoint a committee of the Upper House o£ the Convocation of Canterbury and York to consider conditions under which divorced persons who remarry may be admitted to Holy Communion and to Baptism. A resolution embodylinjj.this request was adopted by lha Convocation this week at Westminstsr. llt was also agreed that the Church should be urged to consider proposals for amendment of the State law oa divorce and to enforce stronger safeguards against collusion and perjury. The Convocation was opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. .Cosmo Lang, who read the follqwing message from the King: "It will be my constant endeavour to follow in King George's footsteps. All that affects the Church will be. my close concern. I join- with you in the prayer • (hat Divine Providence bay guide arid sustain me in my labours for the welfares of my people." j Speaking to the resolution asking for . the appointment of a committee, the Bishop of Winchester (Dr. Garbett) said that they were dealing with the lives of a number of the middle classes I and working people who, through no fault of their own, have had to divorce a previous partner for their own protection and the protection o£ theif children. s RIGID APPLICATION. "It is said that you cannot today' distinguish between the innocent and the guilty," he said. "It is true that in certain small circles with a perverted chivalry it is sometimes e^-c» pected that the man, even though innocent, should take all the blame. I find it difficult to know which to condemn more strongly—the weakness o< the man who adopts such a course, ot the meanness of the woman who expects him to adopt it. "Generally speaking, I think we look upon those regarded by courts of lav as the innocent parties as innocent in fact. They are as a rule people who nave ■ had sad and bitter experience, and if they marry again and live good ctiristian lives I think it is impossible for us with justice and charity to refuse to allow them to have the help of the Holy Communion." "I think most of your lordships have probably adopted the line I have taken in these cases. When I have been asked to allow the guilty party rpmarried to come to Holy Communion I have replied, 'I have'no power to do this.2 Looking back on it, that line may have been too rigid, and I am not prepared now to say that in every , kind of case we must exclude from Communion those who, though guilty, have married again. But if there is ,- to be any admission of the guilty it must be safeguarded most carefully. •There is special necessity for very great caution at the present time, "i do not know whether there is an actual increase in adultery, though the ■divorce figures seem to point to that, though possibly other explanations can be given. The most dangerous thins. I think, is the way in which adultery is so often spoken of as a venial offence and regarded as such." There was very real danger today of adultery being. regarded as a very light matter. It would be a disaster if through their resolutions it was considered that the Church was weakening its witness on this matter. . RELAXATION OPPONENT. The Bishop of St. Albans, Dr. Furse, opposed any relaxation of the attituda | towards divorced persons. The reso- | lution, he said, made no reference to repentance. The conditions of reinstatement should he made public. It should' be no private affair with the Bishop, but a most solemn judicial case, the Bishop acting with assessors. A resolution was adopted declaring that it was urgently desirable that steps be taken to strengthen the safeguards against the methods of collusion and- perjury at present riot uncommonly employed in seekinff divorce. Dr. Lang said that these distressing and .scandalous collusions -presented one of those strange cases in which, the powers of evil seem to outwit and defeat the best intentions of beneficent legislation. ' ■ _The results of the abolition of the distinction between the sexes in regard to standards of morality was that it became possible for a wife to obtain a divorce against her husband for a mere single act 'of adultery. The: result was "all this scandalousabuse of going to.an hotel and producing the hotel bill." j One of the claims put forward by the more- reasonable of those seeking reform of the divorce law was that so long as adultery remained the onlystatutory ground of divorce it was impossible to see how these abuses could be restrained, but they might be restrained if further grounds of divorc* were permitted.