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Show i I DECASED WIFE'S SISTER'S BILL. 9 Passage of Measure a Body Blow to ! English Church. The passage of the famous "Deceased "De-ceased Wife's Sister's Rill," which has ben ratified by the house of commons com-mons and passed the committee stage in the house of lords, after a fight of fifty years in the British parliament. I is of immense religious significance. Its adoption into English law is a spe- ; tific proclamation by the government I ihat the Church of England is founded on a fraud. Xo wonder the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury and his 1 clergy fought bitterly against the pass- age of the bill, says the Catholic Uni- verse. If marriage with a deceased s wife's sister is legal in England, then I the whole prop of th? English church, I which is wobbly enough at the best, I fails to the. ground. I The law against such marriages I was promulgated in England by that j zealous maintainor of the sanctity of j Christian matrimony, Henry VIII. who ; fulminated against them an act of I parliament to Justify his own defiance j of the Pone and the moral law. I Catherine of Aragon, in marrying Henry VIII. married the brother of her deceased husband. This was done i with the dispensation of the church, ' which authorizes such marriages where there are good reasons for them. If that marriage was lawful i Henry had no cause for divorce. To : h'avt himself at liberty to marry Ann- Bolyn he had ia revert to tiie Lcviti-cal Lcviti-cal law forbidding marriage with a :eceased wife's sisler or a deceased husband's brother. By declaring his first marriage lawful, parliament has fiwept away the flimsy excuse on which the Church of England was cs-tr.i.lished. |