The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1884-10-02
Decenoy In Divorce.

st. Louis Post-Dispatch: NJ. Naquet's
final triumph in the passage of the di-
vorce law in France has, among other
results, produced note from the Vati-
can calling the attention of the French
government to the fact that this lcgis-
lation is at variance with the doctrines
of the Catholic Church. An encyclical
is to be issued by the Holy See upon
this subject. So far as the attitude of
the church is concerned, there has
never been any doubt. It has opposed
divorce from the beginning; it will go
on opposing it until the end. Within
the pale of the church divorce is not to
be listed among the remedies for mari
tial unhappiness no matter what may
be the law of the land, and the Pope's
action merely amounts to warning to
the faithful that, in spite of the new
French statute, they cannot be d.
vorced.
With the religious aspect Of the ques-
ton all of those who are not Catholics
have nothing to do. We know that
there is an awful amount of unhappi-
ness bound up within the chains of
matrimony, that brutes have married,
do every day marry defenseless girls,
for whom there is no emancipation but
divorce or death; that false and wicked
women daily make a wreck of their
husbands honor, make life hell for
him, leaving him no refuge but suicide
or the public courts. When one has
not religious reason for refusing di-
vorce, it certainly is to these wrctches
the greatest boon that the law can give,
and every step towards decency in the
administration of the law must be well
coined by men of right feeling in every
creed. While France has refused to
come abreast of the other nations in
her divorce laws for centuries, now that
she has done SO, the very framing of
her legislation testities to her high civ
ilization; puts her, in a word, as f.r
ahead of us as she has been behind us.
The French law takes marriage to be a
contract, and if either of the parties to
that contract can show sufficient legal
reason for its dissolution, it will be dis
solved, but it refuses to make it neces-
sary that character should be blasted
and family shame blazoned over Eu-
rope before it will grant divorce. The
law distinguishes between the punish
ment of crime and the undoing of mar.
riage. In America it is necessary, or
at least customary, that the plaintiff
shall prove some scandalous sin on the
part of the defendant in open court,
and the waiting newspapers grcedily
spread the story of adultery and dis
honor broadcast over the lana. The
divorce is given by the courts. and the
crime punished by the journals in the
infamy attached to the criminal.
In France this will not be done.
When one wishes to punish crime one
must take it into the criminal courts:
when one desires divorce the case is
heard privately, the witnesses examined
IN camera, away from the newspapc
reporters and the general public, and
the decision rendered in such manner
that no obloquy falls upon either hus-
band or wife. In this way the great
mass of scandal, which is the chief
grist of the American mills of Justice,
is avoided. Certainly the French
method is the best yet devised, and
worthy of imitation both in England
and the United States.