THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3512, 5 July 1921, Page 22

THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. AN APOLOGIA.

By

J. MACGHENRO, M.A., M.L.C.

IV. That there has been a considerable change of attitude towards this subject on the part of all the churches with the exception of the Anglican Church, and, of course, the Roman Catholic Church, may fairly be inferred from the fact that they have made practically no fight against the most “liberal” enactment in the Empire dealing with divorce. They seem to have abandoned the Roman Catholic dogma of indissolubiltv, presumably recognising the significance of the facts that no society lias ever yet found itself able to do without divorce or some equivalent, and that not one century, nor even a single year, can he found in the history of the Church or of Europe when indissolubility was the practice. Regardless of all such considerations, the Anglican Church has kept harping on the same old string, and the following' is a specimen, of a number of resolutions passed and sent to the writer as sponsor of the Bill and to other members: — The Bill increases the facilities for divorce in a way tlrat lowers the whole t-or.e of marriage and seems almost deliberately to invite collision. We deplore the breaches made hy the State in that code of marriage law which formerly was held by Church and State alike, and remains unaltered in respect of the indissolubility of the marriage bond. This is just the kind of thing one must expect from such a body as the Christchurch Clerical Society when a real’effort is made to solve one of the most important and difficult of those social problems about winch the clergy talk so much. A great deal of good it does to “point out that the Church’s marriage law remains unaltered” ; it is just by reason of that fact that the Church’s attempts to deal with such problems prove so futile, and nothing better is to be expected from a church that persists in its adherence, in a country like New Zealand, to the Roman Catholic Canon Law, which has been almost universally condemned by the greatest, English thinkers and statesmen. As for the foolish clerical objection to the Act, “that it increases the facilities for divorce and lowers tire tone of marriage,” I am content to meet it with the following pronouncement by an Anglican judge, Lord Coleridge, who, when speaking in the House of Lords on Lord Buckmaster’s Divorce Bill about two years ago, as one who had sat as a. judge in the Divorce Court, said that “ho had approached liis work with the generally settled opinion that restrictions on divorce should not be relaxed; but experience had entirely changed.his view. lie wanted to remove the idea the vast increase in the number of applications for divorce necessarily indicated a growing moral degeneration.” I am also in a position to invoke the high authority, of Lord Bryce, who says that “there seems to be no ground for concluding that r.he increase of divorce in America necessarily points to a decline in the standard of domestic morality, and the same conclusion may well he true regarding the greater frequency of divorce all over the world.” Wo have also the authority of Bishop, one of the greatest American authorities on the subject, for the fact that “where the law of divorce is liberal marriage and morality are in a healthy condition.” By way of confirmation of those authoritative statements I invite attention to the fact that in Norway, where separations are granted on the mutual request of both parties, and where such separations may become absolute divorces after three years, divorce is comparatively rare. In 1900 the annual average of divorces, taken for a period of five years, was 129, or six divorces to each 100. COO of the population. The Act was. of course, intended to increase the facilities for divorce, and thereby to remedy certain great evils, to the existence of which the clergy have in the past, been in the habit of shutting their co.’s. simply because Jesus is supposed to have spoken cert am word- which He probably never uttered. It is difficult to imagine how an Act, designed for the purpose of removing- the causes that render divorce necessary can be said to “lower the whole tone of marriage.” Let me ask the members of this society of High Anglicans whether they have ever considered where those causes are to bo found. it not in marriages that have been entered upon thoughtlessly or from unworthy motives such as wealth or rank or because of previous immorality, and in t ho fact that liie Churches confer a fictitious and magical sanctity 111:011 such marriages? The worthy Yorkshire Hear referred to in the third article evidently thought, he ran some risk of censure from his bishop, no,, however, for marrying- immoral couples, but b:r ui?o he had fobbed them eft' . I;!i u, mere legal ceremony performed outside the chancel. Ts it not possible that it is magical hocus-pocus of this kind, rather than the increase of facilities, that, has had the tendency to increase the number of divorces’? This seems to have occurred to the vicar, for he goes on to suggest that all marriages should he celebrated before the registrar; that the religious eere-

mony should be quite distinct, and reserved, for those who really desire it; and that ia the reform which the writer ia now advocating. ‘‘When I consider society’s preparation for marriage,” writes file author of “ The Mirror of Downing Street,” “ and its v ho,e attitude towards love, I regard tho divorce court nor only as an inevitable institution of civilisation, hut us one of tho most merciful of our humanitarian and philanthropic organisations indeed, the kindest of ail rescue societies. l.ike’f'oloI'idge, 1 regard marriage by the Registrar as ‘ reverential to Christianity ’ ; for it seems to me the very height of blasphemy that people who marry without the noblest; conception of love in their souls should approach the altar of God and there make vows which only the sweetest purity can consecrate and only the most religious virtue can hope to‘keep. Far better "that the fashionable marriage of our times should have no more religious pretensions than the hiring of a piano or the engaging of a bedroom, and that as soon as tho unhappy couple have come to their senses, and realise that to live together in daily communion of mind and soul is an intolerable torture, they should be set free to make, if not a wiser choice, at least another shot.” To argua with clergymen who protest against the increase of tho facilities for divorce on the ground that they produce the evils to be remedied is simply waste of time; but the following statement of the case by Cecil Chapman, one of the metropolitan magistrates, will probably carry conviction to ordinary minds:—“The lofty, as well as the reasonable, viewpoints to marriage being recognised as a civil contract to begin with, and an opportunity being given to all who desire it conscientiously to obtain the blessing and confirmation of their particular church afterwards. It seems to be inviting disaster to give religious sanction to worldly and impious marriages without any warranty for supposing that the parties have any religious feeling in the matter, as it is unchristian, in the highest degree to refuse the blessing and consolation of religion to an innocent man or woman who desires it, simply because he (or she) has been previously released from an impossible or a morally degrading marriage.” The last sentence of this passage calls for a reference to a pronouncement made some years ago by Bishop Julius, of Christchurch, in connection with a. case that occurred in New Plymouth in which Mr Justice Denniston had referred to the proceedings as “farcical.” “I quite agree with Mr Justice Denniston,” said the bishop, “that tho tiling was a farce. I stand by the law of the Church, and I allow no clergyman to perform any marriage ceremony for divorced persons.” Now. if there was a farce in connection, with this affair, it took place, not in the court, but in the church, and there was a third party to the farce—the clergy man who professed to act as God’s deputy in uniting the couple by an indissoluble bond, for at the door of the church the couple whom the judge divorced had parted and had never met again. The dissolution of the “indissoluble” bond, which the judge “incautiously” referred to as a farce, was sanctioned !>y a provision in the Act introduced by the writer in 1894, and the judge’s remark led to a movement in certain quarters _ for the repeal of that provision, and during the premiership of Sir Joseph Ward the movement was successful. Shortly after the death of Mr Justice Denniston Mr Justice Edwards made this statement:— “I repeat what I said on a former occasion. The repeal of the provision in the divorce law to which I have referred was a blow to morality. The remark made by Mr Justice Denniston was incautious, and I can now say from my seat on the bench that Judge Denniston himself regretted the fact that lie hud made that incautious remark anil that it had led to the repeal of the provisions which, his honor recognised, quite as fully as I do, were in the interests of morality. J Jo not, speak of what I do not know. I speak of a personal conversation with the judge.” The restoration of that provision to the Statute Bock was one of the objects of the Act of 1920, and it passed without opposition. Apropos of the statement of Bishop Julius that he allowed no clergyman to perform any marriage ceremony for divorced persons, it may interest the bishop and High Anglicans generally to know what Dr Charles, Archdeacon of Westminster, says on the subject in a book which has been described by the Spectator as ‘‘a study which will make history.” Dr Charles comes to the conclusion that re-marriage ►after divorce is not forbidden anywhere in the New Testament save in an interpolation (Cor. vii. 11) : “Since, therefore, our Lord’s statements on divorce condemned only these w ho put away their wives on inadequate grounds, and since those statements, explicitly in Matthew, and implicitly in Mark, admit the right of divorce on the ground of adultery, it follows that, there is no justification whatever in Christ’s teaching for the attitude assumed by a large number of ecclesiastics, who at the present day deny the right of divorce in the case of adultery, and the right of subsequent remarriage, to the guiltless person, and, in the ease of such re-marriage, refuse such persons communion-—in other words, excommunicate them. Of such ecclesiastics, who lord it so mercilessly over the heritage committed to them, we may say. with the Old Testament prophet, that by their misrepresentations they have made the heart of the righteous sad, and that, like their forerunners in the Old Testament, they are making void the teaching of Christ bv their traditions.” Such are the consequences to the Anglican Church and to the community of that “damnosa hereditas” derived from the Roman Catholic Canon Law—tho dogma of Indissolubility.