MARRIAGE PROBLEMS.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 27, Issue 6, 1 June 1937, Page 8

MARRIAGE PROBLEMS.

(From the Archbishop's Address.) (Continued from May. ) "Darwell Stone, m his book "Christian Dogma," says: "According to the ordinary teaching of the Christian Church, what is essential to a valid marriage is the formal consent of parties free to contract marriage with one another and this independent of any religious ceremony," and Lord Phillimore says that the declared consent of the parties to take* each other there and then as husband and wife contracted, though irregularly, holy matrimony. If the consent to a marriage was obtained by deceit or wilful perversion of the truth, is not the very essence of marriage invalidated thereby? The Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes appointed m 1909, reported m 1912. and suggested the extension of grounds for. a declaration of nullity of marriage, epecially where such grounds were "existent at the time of the celebration of marriage." The Minority Report, signed by the present Archbishop of Canterbury and two eminent jurists, Sir William Anson and Sir Lewis Dibdin, was sympathetic to some enlargement of the grounds on which a decree of nullity might be declared. (2) In view of the fact that the sacredness of the marriage service is often to a large extent lost sight of m the maze of conventional social customs which have attached them-

selves to the marriage ceremony and: m view of the fact that the sacramental nature of marriage is largely overlooked, is it not worth while for the Church to consider whether it is expedient that the Church's blessing on a marriage should continue to be allied with the civil aspect of a marriage, performed by an officiating minister recognised by the State,, after receiving the State's permission so to act? If a separate civil marriage was ■ compulsory m every case .and the Church was free to bestow the blessing of the Church upon such persons as really and earnestly desire it and •had every intention of abiding by its-. discipline and ideals, might it not serve to emphasise the real meaning and purpose of the Church's marriage service, and help to restore and deepen a sense of the sacredness of the marriage union? (3) In view of the fact stated m the Lambeth 1930 committee's report on marriage, viz.: "We acknowledge that though the Church has set before her members the highest ideal of marriage, she has done but little to train them for it," does it not behove the Church to consider carefully what steps can be taken ■ by means of literature or m other ways, to impress upon those about to be married the sacred relationship into which mariage admits them and the sacred duties and responsibilities of the married state? It would be well if the whole Province could take some concerted action m this matter and make use of the same literature. If such committee could be set up to consider and report upon these and similar questions connected with the very basis of all true and stable family and national life, might it not present its report to the standing committee of this Synod and might not the standing committee be given power to act m such ways as it thought desirable?