"MIXED" MARRIAGES.

Grey River Argus, Volume XIII, Issue 1586, 4 September 1873, Page 3

"MIXED" MARRIAGES.

Several letters have lately appeared in the London Times, complaining of the re- ;■• fusal of Roman Catholic priests to celebrate marriages between Catholics and Protestants without a promise that the Protestant ceremony shall be dispensed with; altogether, and a written engagement that all the children should be \- brought up Catholics. A Home Review says :— This complaint, so far as it is ! directed against the individual priests, is wholly unreasonable, for they have no .:• choice in the matter. The state of the case, briefly put, is this : So long as no 1 marriages could be legally celebrated in England, except by the clergy of the Established Church, the process was simple enough. All marriages, Catholic or Protestant, were, as a matter of course, • solemnised in the parish phurch 3 any further ceremony, unknown to tie law, which both or either of the parties might desire, being added at their discretion. But when, some five-and-thirty years ago, v the option of civil marriage, either at the registrar's office, or by his attendance at the religious service in a Noneomformist place of worship, was introduced, this ceased to be necessary. It is true, indeed, as has been lately pointed but in connection with Mr Osborne Morgan's preposterous Btirials Bill, that a, large proportion of J ''" Dissenters stilL prefer being married at . church, rather than at the* registrar's ;I office or own chapels, Bi}t where bflth parties a^e "Roman, Catholics,-, they Batprajly elect to be upited by priests of their oww faith, and see no reason for repeating the ceremony elsewhere. When, however, one party was a Protestant, or at least a member of the Church of England, it became usual for the Anglican ceremony to follow the Roman Catholic, nor was any difficulty till very recently experienced in carrying out this arrange-