NE TEMERE DEGREE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11251, 1 July 1922, Page 4

NE TEMERE DEGREE

RECENT LEGISLATION AND THE CABLEGRAM FROM SYDNEY. QUESTION IN PARLIAMENT. Tho Hon. Mr Cohen gave notice in tho Legislative Council yesterday that ho intended to ask if tho attention of the Government had been drawn to the following Press cablegram from Sydney:—“Tho Ne Temere decree controversy has been revived. Captain Chaplain Wilson, who has just returned from a visit to Now Zealand, addressing a gathering in the Lyceum Hall, stated that the Prime Minister (Mr Massey) had assured him that the Ne Temere decree had been made inoperative in the Dominion a 6 the outcome of the 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, hut emphasised the point that anyone flouting them would be dealt with irrespective of creed or station. Father Forrest, of tho Sacred Heart Monastery, Kensington, in a letter to the Press, replying to Captain Wilson, says: ‘I 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 Ne 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 hotter than the Prime Minister -.that it is beyond his power to enforce it.”

Mr Cohen will ask also if the Re-gistrar-General of Marriages has reported to tho Government any instances of the priests of the Roman Catholic Church or the clergy of any other religious denomination offering to treat the before-mentioned enactments with supreme contempt. In a note appended to the question Mr Cohen says: “I am assured that the Prime Minister, when giving a short interview recently to Chaplain Wilson, gave him clearly to understand that our Marriage Act was working satisfactorily.*’