DIVORCE IN BRITAIN

Evening Star, Issue 22684, 25 June 1937, Page 9

DIVORCE IN BRITAIN

BILL BEFORE HOUSE DF LORDS ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY STATES HIS CASE (British Official Wireless.)' Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright RUGBY, June 24. (Received June 25, at noon.) The Marriage Bill, amending the law of divorce, has reached the House of Lords, and the Archbishop of Canterbury intervened in the second reading debate to state his position. The existing law in the matter of divorce, he said, had proved to be unsatisfactory in its operation, and had given rise to grave abuses detrimental, not only to marriage itself, hut to public morality. The Bill contained some valuable remedies against this, and he could not honestly vote against its second reading. On the other hand, as the representative officer of the church, in his judgment divorce, and certainly remarriage after divorce, was inconsistent with the principles laid down by Christ and accepted in its own laws and formalities by the church; therefore he could not take the responsibility of promoting legislation which, in some of its principal proposals, was inconsistent with those principles and that standard. Dr Lang said he would take no part in the division, and advised others of a like mind to follow the same course. THE ARCHBISHOP'S COMMENTS LONDON, June 24. (Received June 25, at 12.30 p.m.) Packed benches in the galleries of the House of Lords listened with intense interest to the debate on the second reading of the Marriage Bill. The Archbishop of Canterbury said the existing law was responsible for many abuses. Adultery was being treated with shocking levity. He referred to false evidence in divorce actions, and continued: “I am astonished that honourable men could employ devices that can only be described as constructive perjury. It is difficult not to place wilful desertion in the same category as adultery as a ground of divorce, but I would not support the inclusion of insanity.” The Bishop of Durham (Dr Hensley Henson) said that the Bill would bring the law of England into deeper and truer harmony with the law of Christ.