MARRIAGE ACT AMENDMENT BILL

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 23 September 1920, Page 3

MARRIAGE ACT AMENDMENT BILL

THE SACRAMENTAL VIEW,

Considerable , opposition has been shown against the proposed alteration in the. Marriage Act Amendment Bill (states a contemporary). This bill intends to make it a penal offence punishable with a fine of £100 or twelve months' imprisonment for any one to maintain that a marriage in a registry office is not a true and sufficient marriage. The Roman Catholic Church regards marriage as a sacrament, and the sacramental side is to this church the chief thing in marriage. It can hardly therefore be expected to declare that a marriage in a registry office is just as true and sufficient a marriage as one performed under the auspices of their church. The sacramental view of marriage is also held by many Anglicans, a large number of Anglican divines maintaining that, marriage is a sacrament, though not like Baptism and the Holy Communion universally necessary for salvation. But under the proposed bill all ministers will be forbidden from declaring that the religious ceremony is an essential part of marriage, and though the Anglican prayer book distinctly takes this point of view and is exempted by a special clause from the operation of the Act, yet a minister expounding the prayer book point of view in a sermon would be liable to twelve months' imprisonment.

The churches are quite willing to recognise the legality and legal validity of all marriages performed in accordance with the law of the land. If the law of the land decreed that people were properly married by pulling the wish-bone of a chicken, then the churches would be quite willing to agree that a marriage so performed was legal, but they can hardly be expected to agree that such a marriage was true and sufficient, and that such a ceremony was a sufficient ceremony, thus relegating the religious side of marriage to the position of something merely superfluous and ornamental, like the capital letters in legal deeds or the red sealing wax with which chemists do ud parcels of throat lozenges. A man is legally buried if he is put in a hole in the ground and a little earth shovelled over him, and a document signed to. the effect that he had been buried ; but Christian people could hardly be expected to maintain that from their point of view this was a true and sufficient burial, thus implying that the religious side of the funeral service was a merely superflous piece of ritual, like the undertaker's top hat.

The churches are quite agreed that they would be willing to see inserted in the Act the word "legal" instead of the words " true and sufficient." The latter words make opinion a crime, and they seek to punish everybody who maintain that marriage is a union in the sight of God. The Protestant churches would undoubtedly make common cause with the Roman Catholics if^ny attempt were made to enforce the Act as at present drafted. Indeed, no minister could possibly maintain that the religious side of marriage was a superfluity, any more than he could maintain that the religious side of the burial service was entirely ornamental, or that the registration of a birth was quite sufficient without baptism. The teaching of the Anglican prayer book is quite clear and decisive when it says " Those that are coupled together otherwise than God's word does allow are not joined together by God neither is their matrimony lawful." This is recognised by the framers of the Act, and in the third of the penal clauses it is stated that this form of service may be used without making the clergy liable to penalty. But there is no doubt whatever from the opinion of eminent counsel that a clergyman upholding this doctrine in the pulpit or the press or even in private conversation would be liable to imprisonment or a heavy fine. In all probability, the obnoxious words will be deleted and the word v legal " substituted for them. If they are retained in their present form all the Christian churches will probably unite in opposition.