The Washington herald., 1911-10-22
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.
Rev. DR.. Mckim Supplements State
ments Made in His Sermon.

Rev. DR.. Mckim Supplements State
ments Made in His Sermon.
Editor The Washington Herald:
For the information Of your corre-
spondent, Mr.. Francis De Sales Ryan, I
! transcribe the words of Christ to His
disciples as recorded in the Gospel of
st. Matthew, xix:9: Il say unto you,
that whosoever shall put away his wife.
except for fornication, and shall marry
another. committeth adultery" Again,
in st. Matthew. VIZ, our Lord says, L
say unto you. that every one that put
teth away his wife. saving for the
cause of fOrnicatiOn, maketh her an
adultress." Thus our Saviour made ono
exception in His prohibition of divorce.
The ancient fathers so understood it.
Tertullian says: "Christ's prohibition of
divorce was a conditional one. He did
not prohibit absolutely; and what He
did not absolutely forbid, that He per-
mitted on some occasions - Di-
vorce, therefore, when justly deserved.
has even in Christ a defender" And
again: He permits divorce when the
marriage is spotted with infidelity." The
famous scholar Father Oregon says:
Our Saviour says: Not at all permit
ting the dissolution of marriage for any
other sin than that of fornication alone"
st. ChrysostOn says: The Lord has light
ened the enactment Of His law of mar
riage by leaving one II amer of dissolu-
ton when He saith. Except for the
cause of fornication.' " Again he says:
After the inhdelity of the husband, he
is no longer a husband" St Basil and
also Epiphanius and Lactantius express
themselves in the same manner.
I said in my sermon that the attempt
OF the great Roman Church to enforce
the rule of absolute indissolubiIity of
marriage had been a failure, judged by
history. ancient and modern Witness
the following statement of DR.. J. Elliott
Howard, in his History Of Matrimonial
Institutions" Volume II, page Sc: 'Practi-
cally speaking, it cannot be doubted that
there existed a very wide liberty of
divorce in the Middle Ages, though it
existed mainly for those who We're able
to pay the ecclesiastical judge for finding
a way through the tortuous ways of for
hidden degrees. In a divorce procedure,
masquerading under the guise of action
for multiplying spurious marriages, lurked
the germs of perjury and fraud I"
Spouses who had quarreled began to in
vestigate their pedigrees, and were un-
lucky if they could discover no cause
which would have prevented the contrac-
ton of a valid marriage. =" So tan
gled was the casuistry respecting mar
riage at the beginning of the sixteenth
century that it might be said that for a
a.,
could be found in almost any marriage
A case is mentioned by Coke in
which a marriage was pronounced null
because the husband had stood godfather
for the cousin of his wife"
1 could fill columns of your paper with
examples OF marriages which. after ex-
listing for many years, have been set
aside as null and void and the parties
declared at liberty to marry again by
the ecclesiastical authorities. I could tell
of a case in which two members of the
Roman Church were married in Ireland
by a Roman priest and some years later,
having transferred their affections to
other parties, they were advised by their
spiritual guides that their first marriage
was null and void in default of a certain
dispensatiOn, and each was married to
another party. The whole world is IA
miliar with the recent bull ne temere
issued by his holiness, Piux X, in which
marriages between Protestants and mem
bers of the Roman communion are de-
clar3d null and void. Mgr. Annette, Arch
bishop of Paris, declaring the approval
of the church of the marriage of Nine.
Eames and Signor Gogorza, said that
marriages between unbaptized persons
can be broken when one spouse wants
to become a convert to Catholicism. 1t
is thus, by a spontaneous act of faith,
that one spouse iiberates himself or her
self from the marriage bend" He went
on to say that NINE. Eames, if she is
to Catholicism, is able to con-
tract a new marriage, valid in the eyes
of the church" The archbishop further
sail that Signor Gogorza is a Catholic,
but he married a Jewess in his first mar
riage. When he contracted this marriage
he had not asked for the VatiCan's dis
peRsatiOn; therefore this union was not
by the church. He was free"
Much might be said about this scandal
lous use of the power of dispensation.
AS in the case of the Duke of AOsta,
uncle of the present King Of Italy, who
received a dispensation from Piux TX to
marry his brothers daughter. No Won
der that the pious Roman Catholic
Bishop of Pistora denounced the whole
thing as ''an infamous traffic"
The doctrine seems to be this: Mar
riage is indissoluble except: l. When con-
tracted with an unbaptized person. 2.
When solemnized between Protestants
and Catholics. 3. When solemnized be-
tween Catholics contrary to certain reg
ulations. 1. When dispensation to dis
solve il can be secured.
Thus the exceptions are so numerous
that the rule of indissolubility appears to
be Of little value.
October n