CHURCH AND DIVORCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21102, 12 August 1930, Page 7

CHURCH AND DIVORCE.

REQUEST FOR GUIDANCE. COLLUSION RAMPANT. (FeOM OUK OWW CoEBESPOMDEKtO. LONDON. June 28. Discussion on divorce at' the meeting of the Church Assembly was initiated by a resolution asking the archbishops .and bishops for guidance in regard to this question. Mr Athelstan Riley,'vice-president of the English Church Union,.said that the Church of Christ in this land had never sanctioned divorce. Only gradually had the English reverence for holy matrimony as a lifelong bond been undermined. "In 1913 only 577 marriages were dissolved by the courts. In 1923, when the cry of equality between the sexes was at its height, a short measure was passed putting husband, and wife on an equal footing—a cruel and wicked Act. “We are as God made us. .There is and can be < no equality in matters of sexual morality between men and women. "It has pleased God to create a profound inequality. There is inequality of temptation, in the respits of the- Sin to the individual, in the consequences to the family, and eventually to society at large. • “The results are plain for all to see. By 1926 the total number of divorces reached close upoh 3000,. and last year there were 6300. “One thing stands put clearly. The ‘innocent party’ is rapidly disappearing. Collusion is rampant. When tired of each other’s society, the husband, in the language of the day, is to * do the honourable thing,'-and an hotel bill is brought into court. It is, common knowledge that since the war a new profession has arisen —of women who are prepared for a consideration to provide the hotel bill, even if no adultery takes place. “And consider how the Church : is dragged through this stream of corruption! In every rank of society we church people are present at marriages which we knoW are being undertaken ‘lightly and wantonly, _ by those who are very doubtful Christians.' Will the bishops tell us what we ought to do? CHURCH DRAGGED THROUGH TllE MIRE. “We are face to face with the fact that we can no longer regard England as a Christian country in the sense of a country which rules itself by the laws of Chmt The Church is now being dragged through the mire; it will soon be dragged through a cesspool. What is her duty? To forfeit her claims to be a teacher of religion and morality and to take her faith and moral code from the passing legislation of the day would be to betray her Master’s trust and to commit spiritual suicide.” Mr Riley said that the French system of _ civil marriages supplemented by religious people by the rites of their church would _ greatly relieve the present intolerable situation, " One thing is clear.” concluded Mr Riley. “We cannotgoon as we are being parties to a national rupture of m the marriage bond.” A resolution was eventually passed asking the archbishops and bishops of England to issue counsel to the laity as to the position of persons divorced by the State and contracting fresh alliances.