MARRIAGE LAW.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1515, 10 August 1912, Page 9

MARRIAGE LAW.

THE DECISION OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS. .ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S ' VIEW.

In response lo a request for porno counsel on tho point raised by the recent House of Lords' decision against Canon Thompson, who barred from Holy Communion JHr. Banister, who married his deceased wife's aster, tho. Archbishop of Canterbury has written a long letter to tho Bishop of London. In this, referring ,(o a letter which he sent to Dr. luge two years ago, the Archbishop saysi-r-. . "The contention that it rests with Pariameiit or with the Civil Courts aud not with the Church itself, which has authorities and Courts for the purpose, to determine, the conditions of tho admission of our members jo Holy .Communion, is uiit'.'iiablc, and if it were- to be authoritatively assorted, acquiescence in it would ba impossible. It has not, so far as I can see, , been authoritatively asserted, (hough I own that some, of (ho judicial language used in the Civil Courts seems to go perilously near to such a contention. Tho much more rough and ready conclusions drawn in certain newspapers and clsewhero may be ascribed, I think, to a popular misunderstanding'of (he technical points involved, and of tho true, position of our ecclesiastical law. "I will not attempt to rc-arguo what I said on that subject in 1910. . . . As regards tho practical question which underlies these technical points—the question, namely, whether a man i\ho under the existing law marries his deceased wife's sister, ought ov not to ba admitted to Holy Communion—no universal or sweeping decision has been, or, 1 think, can rightly bo laid down. "A few weeks after tho passing of the Act, I wrote, as you may remember,' to my own dioccso a long letter, in which I tried to deal with tho whole question which had arisen. In it I pointed out that, greatly as I deplored tho Act, it is in my judgment impossible to regard a man as becoming ipso facto 'an open and notorious evil liver' on account solely of contracting that particular marriage after it had as a civil contract been expressly sanctioned by English law. If, us is perfectly possible, he is to bo rightly repelled from Communion, either for a lime or permanently, such repulsion would have to be on other grounds than the application of the words which' 1 have quoted.

"I wrote on my own solo responsibility, and, indeed,- I felt myself precluded from consulting Ecclesiastical Judges, before whom, tho question might officially come. But it was a satisfaction to me a few months later to find my view on that particular point supported by the Dean of .1 relies iu hi.s formal judgment. "Again, when tho Lambeth Conferenceof Bishops from all parts of tho world considered in 1908 the marriage problems submitted to it. tho great committee of thirty-four Bishops agreed to a report in which they say.''We arc of opinion, that marriage with a deceased wife's sister, whero permitted by the law of the land, and at the same time prohibited by tho Canons of the Church, is to be regarded not as a non-marital union, but as a marriage ecclesiastically irregular, while-not constituting the-parties "open and notorious evil-doers."' So far, then, as the ecclesiastical opinion of our Church lias found formal expression, it would seem to accord with what has incidentally been said on this particular point by the Judges of our highest Civil Courts, al--1 though, as I have pointed out, the interpretation or application of the Rubric (apart from tho Act of Parliament) was not technically beforo them."

After a .reference to (lie popular contention that, 'as a matter of fact, the Act of Parliament does effectively change ths Church's law," a contention which ho seeks to refute, the Archbishop concluded as follows:—- ■

: "It" seoms n 'to me 'that the most important thing' to bear in mind at this moment, in view of -current and not unnatural anxiety, is that nothing ha.s really been dono. which impairs tho Church's right through her own authorities and tribunals to interpret her own rubrics and to regulate her own terms of Communion; Our Representative Church Council in 1910 recorded its 'emphatic opinion that any assumption that the State can by Parliamentary legislation practically dictate the terms of admission to Holy Com-munion-is a position which cannot be accepted by the Church.' When putting to (he vote that resolution,' wliich was carried by bishops, clergy, and laity nomine contradicente, I ventured to describe if as .11 self-evident proposition wliich hardly required the vote of tho Council. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of maintaining these principles at a timo when it is regarded by some pooplo as not improbable'that an attempt may be made in Parliament to alter our marriage laws in a more drastic and far-reaching way than was effected by what wo regard as "tho unhappy Act of 1907."