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Show MARRIAGE CASES THAT SCANDALIZE. (From the True Voice.) Jt is hardly necessary to explain to Catholics that the church 'toes not recogize the power of the f-tate to dissolve the bond of a-v.did marriage. Yet from time to time a case crops up where one of ihe parties par-ties to a civil divorce is married to another with the ;;iiKti .; cf the church. One of these cases was given prom. nonce v. the Oma'h? papers during the past wet k. The explanation is simple enough. The former for-mer n .image of the divorced person was null and void from the boginmmr, and was so declared by compiler t church anh":ty. That left the- person in question free to mam not by virtue of the civil divoice, but because there was no former marriage to prevent it. The church recognizes or establishes certain impediments im-pediments as a bar to valid marriage. Where such irax-pdimcnts exist and have not been removed, the parties may go through the' form of entering a marriage mar-riage contract, but they are not married. Some of these impediments the civil law does not take account ac-count of. Hence a marriage pronounced valid by the courts and divorce granted for other reasons ma. be ;nvalid from the beginning in the eyes of the church and before God. Where a "civil divorce, has been granted in the ease of a pseudo-marriage flint is really invalid from the beginning, there is nothing to prevent one of the parties from marrying marry-ing again after the fact of the invalidity of the former for-mer marriage has been established. There will always be some who do not understand under-stand the facts in such cases when they do arise, and who are scandalized when ' one who has evef been divorced is married with the sanction of the church. That cmirKu be helped by those whose business bus-iness it is to interpret the law .and apply it to individual indi-vidual cases. Perhaps there is some reason, too, for the fault-i'iud.'ng, inasmuch as the parties in the case of nit invalid marriage take advantage of a penalty imposed upon them and turn it to thei. own profit. But they are comparatively rare, thank God! Most .of them are converts who, let us charitably suppose, did not realize the consequences of contracting con-tracting an invalid marriage. Any Catholic worthy of the name would rather face death than incur them. Very few Catholics can plead the invalidity of a first marriage as an excuse for a second venture. ven-ture. At best, these cases are far from edifying, but the fault generally lies firther back than the last act in them. The trouble is that most people are ' inclined to be scandalized at what is harmless tiiough in itself, while they never thing of being disedified at ihe really blamable conduct that too often gives rise to those "marriage cases." |