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Show MARRIAGES FOR CONVENIENCE. While the; devil is driving ill-mated couples cou-ples to the divorce court, God is directing the inquiring Protestant mind to a contemplation contem-plation of the Church's position on marriage. mar-riage. Xo well-informed non-Catholic will deny the Church's claim to be conservator of morals, no matter how strenuously he opposes her claim to be the true and only church instituted by Christ. He cannot help it. The Catholic family is an every day object lesson. On the other hand, so is the divorce court. Here is a recent illustration, clipped from the I daily press of this city: N Less than five months of married life proved enough for Betrand N. Matthews, who says his wife, Clemina Matthews, told him that she merely married him in a spirit of fun and that she "had no intention at the time of abiding by the contract. The couple were married in this city on April 28, 1904, the ceremony having been performed by Mrs. Harriet Fontyn, according to the rites of the Spiritual church. Whatever faith Bertram! Matthews placed in the incantations or ;rites of the Spiritist church," evidently the woman married by such ''ceremony" did not share it with him. Clemma married Bertrand, Bert-rand, according to the batter's testimony, only in a spirit of fun. ' Worse, the woman is a confessed wanton when she admitted to the husband of that piebald pagan marriage that (at the time) she had no intention of abiding by the contract. Knowing this, why did the bridegroom seek out this Spiritist medium, to go through a form of binding a man to a woman ? . So long as the act was eutered into in a spirit of fun, as the woman declared; would it have been less sinful to live in the shameful relation rela-tion of protector and mistress? Indeed, the latter condition would have the merit of cheating the devil and incidentally saving the fee of the Spiritist Spirit-ist performer of marriage "rites." The inability to perceive the sacredncss of the marriage tie is not the least of the causes threatening threaten-ing the foundation of society in this country. Marriages Mar-riages for convenience arc in evidence every day; and so long as such unions can be dissolved by civil courts upon complaints of desertion, that complexion complex-ion of testimony offers a safe and easy road to' another marriage for convenience. Indeed, many divorces are mutually pre-arranged, one party purposely pur-posely "deserting" in order that tho other might obtain a decree. While the Catholic is absolved from this blot upon society, in common with every other person desirous of placing morals first in the transactions of life, he cannot help deploring a condition fast plunging this nation into vice and immorality more appalling than those sins which caused the downfall down-fall of pagan Rome. Wc sec an evidence of effort to stem this tide of immorality when enlightened Protestants compare the methods of Catholics with the impotent energy of ministers of their own beliefs. ,-Sd it is, in analyzing the cause for all this rottenness in society, they find it in the irreligious education of the youth ; and they begin to seo that the Catholic -is right in maintaining that education edu-cation without religion is destructive to good citizenship, citi-zenship, and that a country is just what its citizens make it. Until marriage is recognized as a sacrament, there will be no health to sentiment in this country, and divorce and race suicide will be the portion of Americans. That holy matrimony is a sacrament i instituted by Christ is clearly shown by St. Paul's words to the Ephesiaus: ."Therefore as the Church is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be to their husbands in all things. Husband, love your wives as Christ also loved the Church and delivered deliv-ered himself, up for it For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife and they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrapienf, but I speak in Christ and in His Church." ' |
