Divorce: its Root Cause

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 14, 6 April 1905, Page 2

Divorce: its Root Cause

In the piages of his ' Past and Present,' the rugged old Sage of Chelsea lashes the hide of the social quack

with the caW-nine-tails of his fiercest satire. Now, many evils will cling to our social system— like the barnacles that they are— till the sound of the last trumpet. And the social quack, like the poor, will be alwajs with us, with his patent pills and cure-alls. But the most qurious of all the reicent charlatan remedies for social plagues are those which have been from time to time tfugjgeisted. as a means of curing the rampant and growing Picartdal of divorce In America the tampering with the marriage tie has de\ eloped (as some one has remarked) uit o ' a great national industry.' Among the prescriptions put forth to cure this great social and domestic evil are the following : refusal of the assistance of clergy at the remarriage of the ' guilty party' ; refusal by society leaddrs to leave cards on divorced women, or to invite them to dinner ; ten-year 'marriages ' (which are, of course, not marriages at all) ; the formation of Bachelor Girls' Associations ; and allround ansd somewhat aimless scoldings from the nonCatholic pulpit about the ' evils ' of divorce. There seems, however, to be little disposition, on the part of the rieverorid piulpiteers, to go to the root of the mattor and to denounce not merely the e\ils of di'.orce, but cLiuoice itself, and to stand fairly and squarely, as the Catholic Church has ever done, for the unity and indissolufbihty of the marriage contract. The distinction that is made by many non-Catholic clergymen in favor of the innocent party is devoid alike of reason and common-sense. Either the marriage-tie is dissolved by divorce, or it is not. If it is rh solved, both parties, n respective of their innocence or guilt— are obviously alike free to contract a second union. If the marriage tie remains after divorce (and it does), then both are equally boujnd by it till death does them part. By the \ cry nature of the marriage contract , the bond is either miutual or non-existent. The divorce evil— in -which these new countries are fast toll awing in the wake of Uncle Sam — is tcto lleeip and old-standing for the rose-water and pink-pills treatment ; the fever is too raging to be cured by pouting hi sor soft fanning with fans. .Its ro/ot cause lies in the loose doctrines regarding the mamage tie that came in with tjie religious revolution cf the sixteenth century — doctrines' which still hold their ground, with the beni-s-'on of praiotically all the creeds whose Ilegira dates fiorn tiuat i eriod of storm and strife. Cardinal Gibbons points the moral and adorns the tale of divorce in a recent issue of ' Men and Women," and quotes in point the following utterance of the Protestant Episcopalian Ihaho^i of Maine : ' Laxity of d\ inion and teaching on the sacrodness of the mamage bond and on the question of diviorce originated among the Protestants of continental Europe in the sixteenth century. It soon began to ajppear in the legislation of Protestant States on that continent, and nearly at the same time to affect the laws .of Now England. From that time to the present it has proceeded from one degree to another in this country, until, especially in New England and in States most directly aftected by New England opinions anld usages, the Christian conception of thie natuie and obligations of the marriage bond finds scarcely any recognition in legislation or in the prevailing sentiment of the commiunity.' The Protestant Prelate has ' put his fnger on the spot.' There, indeed, lies the tap-root of the spreading evil of divioree— in the loose teachings of the Reformed Ohurcihes regarding the unity, sanctity, and indinsolubility of the marriage bond. There are, no doubt, other causes whioh contribute, in various degrees, to aggravate this growing danger to domestic life But there lies the main cianiise. The remedy does not lie m withiholdimig visiting cards, nor in polite and make-believe distinctions between the ' innocent ' and the ' guilty party,' nor in a.ny other such paltry inventions of male or female quack-heads. Something better was suggested towards the close of 1897 by Mrs. Chapman— a non-Cath-olic writer— in her 'book, ' Marriage Questions in Modern Fiction.' ' The only way,' she says, 'to restore honor

and dignity to marriage is to make it indissoluble, arid to convert all men and women, Christian and Agnostic, to tine belief that it is a Sacrament.' But this is a far-ofi hape. The Catholic Church still remains, as sihe e\er was, the bulwark of domestic life, the fe&rle&s and constant defender of women's best and most sacred rights. She let England fall away rather than sanction a royal di\orfce in favor ol Henry VIII. what lime ' tihe (rospe! light lirst dawned from liu lien's ey&s ' upon his She murntainett a like inflexible front in the case of Philip Augustus, King of France, Jerome Buonaparte, etc. Where her laws are faithfully obeyed, there is and can be no tampering with the 6 acred bond of wodlock.