OCR Text |
Show NOW COMES 3ISHOP DOANE- Bishop Doane of the Protestant Episcopal Epis-copal church in an address delivered at Albany" N. Y.. on the 14th inst., thus speaks cf divorce, which seems to be splitting the Protestant Episcopal church asunder: "I am most urgent that we 6hould consider the duty of giving a tone to society, in the hope that, when it can be induced to set its ban upon offenses against God's law, there will be a power at work far more efficient to arrest the evil than can be measured by its ( good influence upon those who are de- I termined to sin. Speaking practically, I I beg you to consider whether the ex-istency ex-istency of the social crisis does not de- mand the heroic treatment of absolute and unvarying prohibition. "If this church can by any language or by any enactment cf canon or rubric rid herself of all responsibility -for remarriage re-marriage after divorce she will have set up a barrier against the foul tide of the desecration of marriage, of the degradation degra-dation of the family, of the deterioration deteriora-tion of the home, which must turn the j current aside until it finds its way i where it belongs, into the sewage and j not into the sources of supply." Like all of his confreres, Bishop Doane misses the point. It is not society, socie-ty, at least society which professes belief be-lief in Episcopalianism which needs toning up, so much as the church which professes to carry to society the Word of God. The Protestant Episcopal Church, as a church, has condoned divorce di-vorce in all of its aspects, and it is only now when it sees and stands aghast at the 4'uin which its own negligence has wrought that it is seeking to find a scapegoat for its errors of omission and commission as well. How . long will Christian men dally with this great evil in American social life? There is only one view of divorce which can save society, and that is the Roman Catholic view. . I |