MIXED MARRIAGES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 35, 27 December 1873, Page 11

MIXED MARRIAGES.

WB take from the « Pastoral Letter of the Archbishop and Bishops of the Province of Westminster in Provincial Council Assembled," the following pronouncement on mixed marriages :—: — The Church has by its earliest discipline, and at all times in the language of great energy, condemned marriages of mixed religion. The reasons of this prohibition to you are self-evident j to the world they are, like the Catholic Faith itself, unintelligible. The Church has added to its prohibition the impediment whereby a mixed marriage witnout dispensation is unlawful. For grave causes, such a dispensation is granted by the Church. But it cannot be granted except upon the mutual and united promise of the two parties, Catholic and nonCatholic, made to the Bishop who grants the dispensation, that the Catholic party shall have perfect liberty to practise the Catholic religion, that all children born of such marriage shall be brought up io the Catholic Church alone. Of these three conditions the first is so self-evidently right and necessary, that we need do no more than, recite it. But on the two last much censure has been cast, and maDy things unreasonable and untrue have bean said. We will therefore place in your hands a statement of the law of the Church, by which

you will be able to satisfy ali just minds, and to answer even those whose contentions are not just. First, as to the education of the children in the Catholic faith, it has been said and thought that the Church wed to permit that the sons should be brought up in one religion and the daughters in an., other. The Church has never permitted such a thing; it could not permit it ; because such a practice is intrinsically sinful . It would be not only the breach of a law, but it would also be a denial of the Catholic faith. The Catholic Church knows of only one faith in which we can be saved. To consent to, or to countenance, an agreement by which one soul shall be brought up out of that way of salvation would be a mortal sin, and a tacit denial of the one only way of salvation, lhis the Church has never done, nor has ever even implicitly countenanced. They who have done such things will answer at the judgment seat for their own personal acts, which were not acts of the bhurch, nor sanctioned by the Church, but were in direct variance with its express commands and with the law of God. It is within the memory of living men that the Archbishop of Cologne endured impnsonuient in vindication of this divine law. We are bound to walk in the one only way to life, and to allow no soul for whom we are responsible to be led away from it. The Catholic father or mother who, for interest or worldly motive, consents that their offspring shall be educated out of the way of life in which they profess to desire to die, thereby denies in deed the faith which they profess in words. Both by the natural and the revealed law of God, parents are bound to rear their children in the same grace of salvation in which they hope for eternal life. This condition, then, that all children of such marriage shall be brougnt up in the Catholic faith, is not a new or an arbitrary rule. It is an intrinsic law, founded upon the revelation of God, old as the Church itself, and inseparable from the faith. They who believe that all forms of Christianity are indifferent will perhaps not understand our words. They who believe that the Catholic is the only revealed way of salvation will need no further reasoning. The other condition, that no Catholic shall solemnise marriage before any minister of religion other than the priests of the Catholic Church, rests on principles equally plain. From the unity of the faith springs the unity of divine worship. As it is unlawful to hold communion with any professions of faith out of the unity of Catholic truth, so it is unlawful to hold communion in any acts of religion out of the unity of Catholic worship. Matrimony is a Sacrament of the Church j and no Catholic can therefore hold communion with any marriage ceremony professing to be religious, or in the presence of any person professing to be a minister of religion, out of the unity of the Catholic Church. So long as penal laws inflicted legal nullity upon all Catholic marriages unless they were solemnised before the ministers of the Established Church, Catholics were compelled to go before them, to obtain the legal validity of their marriage and the legal security of their estates. But they went before the minister of the Established Church, not as a minister of religion, but as a civil authority, and for civil effects. Their Catholic marriage was the only marriage they recognised as perfect and valid before God and man 5 but for its civil recognition and legal validity they were compelled by penal laws to appear before the appointed civil officer, who was also a minister of the established religion. When, however, in the year 1836, this penal law was abolished, and the validity of Catholic marriages, with the presence of the Registrar, was legalised, the Registrar took the place of the Protestant clergyman, as the Protestant clergyman had until then discharged the office of the Registrar. From that moment the necessity of appearing before him ceased for all civil effects ; and «o other lawful motive for a Catholic to appear before' him could exist. Thenceforward he could only be regarded aa a minister of religion j and to go before him for any religious act, and especially for matrimony, which a Catholic knows to be a Sacrament, has ever been and ever must be forbidden, as an act intrinsically sinful. The highest authority in the Church declares such an act to be '• unlawful and sacrilegious." This, then, is no new or arbitrary law, recently enacted by us. It is as old as the Church, and directly, and by necessity, resulting from the unity of Catholic Faith. We cannot but Bdd another reason which ought to weigh with, our fellow countrymen, and to satisfy every just mind. The Catholic Church recognises as perfeot and valid the marriages of the people of England contracted before the law of the land, if there be no impediment, which in itself annuls the contracts. The Catholic Church does not remarry those of the English people -who are received into its unity. It regards them as already man and wife, and their children as legitimate. Therefore, if any Catholic solemuise a mixed marriage before the Registrar, or before the Protestant minister, the Catholic Church refuses to remarry them. For two obvious reasons : first. they are already married ; and secondly, the Catholic party has committed a sacrilegious act. If the Catholic Church know beforehand that a Catholic intends, after his Catholic marriage, to commit that act of sacrilege, the law of the Church forbids the Catholic clergy to bless such a marriage. The intention to commit sacrilege excludes a Catholic from the sacraments, and marriage is a sacrament. They who choose to forfeit the benediction of the Church choose their ownlot. The Church is neither responsible for their act, nor severe in withholding a sacrament which, if sacrilegiously received, would add sin to sin. But, beloved brethren and children in Jesus Christ, you know these things : aud we are speaking rather to those who reproach you than to you.