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Show RELIGION AND MARRIAGE. A Priest on Roman Catholic Teaching Teach-ing and Practice on Subject. To the editor of the Sun Sir: In an otherwise fairly accurate account of Roman doc-trine on the subject of marriage mar-riage and divorce, which appears in your columns this morning with the signature of Justiee B. Ward, I find this curious statement: "A marriage between two Protestants is, in the eys of the church, indissoluble, indissolu-ble, although they have received no sacramo-nt." Against the first part of your correspondent's cor-respondent's pronouncement no objection objec-tion can bo urged; but the second part can hardly be said to represent ,lhe view of Roman Cai holies, seeing that it is both untrue in point of fact and constructively., at least unsound in principle. It is untrue in point of fact, for the church has always treated the legitimate legiti-mate marriages of "Baptized persons out of visible communion with the holy see as true sacramental alliances. This practice of hers is in strict conformity with th? disciplinary principle from which she has never deviated. She recognizes a sacrament wherever sh' finds-it. whether in a "schisinat ical" body or in of whose beliefs shi- labels as uncompromisingly "heretical." Sh" does this in the case of baptism and orders, and there is no authentic in-ftrtnee in-ftrtnee of an exception in the case of matrimony. Converts from Protestantism, Protest-antism, if validly baptized in the church j of their birth, are not even counselled t to remarry. tut your correspondent's statement goes somewhat further than bein-j-merely untrue in point of -fact. It is. I submit, confusing and unsound in principle. It seems to imply that Catholic Cath-olic teaching recognizes the possibility of a true and indissoluble mania go contract between a pair of Protestants who may wteh to enter the wedded state, yet that there should be no inevitably in-evitably supervening sacrament to sanctify such a union under due conditions. con-ditions. That is a proposition which . Pius IX condemned in a consistory held on Spt. 27. !Su2 and which he afterward prescribed in etill more explicit ex-plicit terms in the seventy-third proposition propo-sition of the "Syllabus." The late holy ; father. Leo XI JI thus renewed thisx'OiV: j demnatioif hy his predecessor in the famous fa-mous encyclical on marriage issued M iy j 10, lSW:r . "It is plain that it is impossible to separate the contract from the sacra- ment in Christian matrimony, and hence that thn-o can be no true and lawful contract without having at the same lime a sacrament." j A glance at any of -the more elemen-itary elemen-itary manuals of theology in use in our American Catholic seminaries would have been enough to set your correspondent corres-pondent right on this point. Writers, moreover, a cautious and hesitating as Palmicri and De San, to name but two recognised masters of the Society of Jesus, confirm this view almost in as many words. Father Sylvester Hunter, Hun-ter, a: very careful and moderate minded Cambridge scholar, who afterward after-ward joined the English Jesuits, speaks to the same effect in the unpretentious little work in three volumes wliich ho j wrote for the benelit of English speaking speak-ing laymen. Se says: "Wherever marriage is contracted by a valid cvoptract between Chiistians they receive the sacrament, whether they be in communion with the church or are separated from it." ' I once heard an Innsbruck- professor, now -many-years ago, raise n purely f-peculativc doubt as to the real mind of the church in the case of Protestants Protest-ants who marry in those countries where the "decree of clandestinity" prevail. Are such unions valid or. in- -valid? The question is not likely to bother our non-Catholic brethren, though it may have its difficulties for the matrimonial causist. Even if it were answered in the narrowest and most intolerant sense, it could hardly cover the sweeping pronouncement of your correspondent, to whose considera-tion considera-tion I venture courteously to submit the strictures I have made in this counter statement of Roman belief. Indeed, I might go further and say that the only safe proposition to lay down in this delicate business of marrying mar-rying and annulling marriages at Rome or elsewhere is this: It is only the legitimate and consummated marriage of a pair of baptized persons that is accounted absolutely indissoluble by the Catholic church. The practice or the holy see during the past four centuries cen-turies will bear me out in this assertion. asser-tion. C. C. November 13. |