RULE FOR WEDDINGS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21698, 13 January 1934, Page 3 (Supplement)

RULE FOR WEDDINGS

LONDON VICAR'S DECREE CEREMONIES IN CHURCH Writing in his parish magazine on the subject of marriage, the Rev. H. B. Hamer, vicar of St. Luke's, Kingston-on-Thames, states:—"Clergy are bound to refuse to marry unbaptised persons in church. People who have not been confirmed, if they wish to marry at St. Luke's, will not be allowed to approach the altar rails, but that the whole service will take place at the chancel steps." Mr. Hamer writes as follows: 1 —" The whole meaning of marriage in church is the desire to have the Church's blessing. Apart from that motive, marriage at a registrar's office is just as good. To suggest that those who are unbaptised should apply to the registrar for marriage formalities implies no hardship or stigma, as that is wjiat he is appointed for. " The Church's marriage service takes it for granted that those who are being married are communicants. . . . It does not entertain the idea that they may not be communicants at all.

" That anyone who does not go up to the altar to receive Holy Communion of his own desire should want to bo taken up to the altar at his wedding is almost a mockery, since the only meaning in the approach to the altar is the intention to receive Holy Communion at the first opportunity." In the present Book of Common Prayer (first printed in 1662), the rubric at the end of the Form of Solemnisation of Matrimony is, " It is convenient that the now married persons should receive the Holy Communion at the time of their marriage, or at the first opportunity after their marriage." In the previous Book (Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book) the Marriage Service was followed without intermission by the Communion Service.