Divorce

New Zealand Tablet, 11 October 1906, Page 10

Divorce

There is a good deal of truth in the following sarcastic ■definition of '' reform ' : 'In general, a periodic epidemic, starting with marked heat, followed by a high fever, and accompanied by a flow of ink in the newspapers, a discharge of words from the face and a rush of Wood to Ihe polls, leaving the victim a chronic invalid until the next campaign.' We in New Zealand and Australia are all too familiar with this spasmodic or epileptic kind of ' reform.' It is usually conducted by reformers who are bent on ' reforming the other fellow '. Such movements are commonly marked by spasms, jerks, and want of comtinuity ; by lack of the sense of proportion and perspective ; by great violence of language ; and by a settled incapacity to grasp the extent to which circumstances alter cases. It fills the normally constituted mind, for instance, with wonder that men having the care of souls should go into an annual hysteria over harmless amusements, or over the minor physical or moral 'blisters of our day, while their lips are sewed up in regard to divorce and certain other colossal crimes that are sapping the very foundations of social and political life. Strange mole-vision, that fastens or* pore or pimple, and sees not the adjacent cancer ; that scrutinises the ant-hill, and misses the Himalayas round about !

* An American Presbyterian journalist (Mr. J. T. Hemphill, editor-in-chief of the Charleston ' News and Courier ') pays a warm tribute to the Catholic Church for her teaching in regard to divorce. And he declares, in effect, that a reform is to be effected only by the Protestant denominations adjusting their vision •to that of the Church on the subject of the unity and indissolubility of the marriage bond. ' All good Catholics ', says the writer, ' are steadfastly opposed .to any form of absolute divorce under any ligislation by the State, and the position which is taken by the Catholic Church is the position 'which all othet Christian communions should take. .We believe with the (Catholic) convention .at Buffalo that' " sooner or later the truth of the Catholic doctrine" upon the subject must be brought home to the community." The.position of some of the other Churches on this question has been nothing shorts of shameless. Ministers of standing in these Churches have freely married those who 'have been separated by. the courts',' * and who could not under the judicial decrees of sep-aratibn lawfully marry -again in the States' in which -their divorces were" granted. The Roman Catholic position on the question of divorce is the only true position. In that Church marriage is a Sacrament, and if the institution is to be J preserved and the highest interests of society securely protected, it must .be regarded as a Sacrament. Every now and then some convention is proposed, with the object of obtaining unifor-

mity in the divorce laws of this country. These conventions are generally proposed by persons living in States in which the divorce business has been overdone. There has been talk irom time to time of national legislation, but so far all efforts have failed to reach a plan which, while conceding great freedom of action in obtaining divorces, would •at the same time preserve at least the pretence of some high , moral purpose: The only State in the Union in which divorce is not granted is the State of South Carolina. The law in this State is the only law that can be adopted with safety to society and with proper regard -to high religious teaching.'

In New Zealand, as in. America, every increase of the facilities for divorce has been followed by a corresponding increase in the " number of applications for legal ' relief ' from a bond that can only be broken 'by the death of v one of the contracting parties. We are getting on ' in the laxity of our divorce legislation. Even as we write, a Bill to provide further ' facilities ' is before the House of Representatives. And in due course we shall touch the point of social degeneracy at which a decree of divorce will be ' a legal formula that immediately . precedes a fashionable wedding.' ■