ROMAN CATHOLICS AND MARRIAGE LAWS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2164, 17 August 1920, Page 3

ROMAN CATHOLICS AND MARRIAGE LAWS.

In view of tlio current controversy special interest atlachcs to a pamphlet on “Catholics and the Marriage Laws,’’ by the Rev. Dr. Cleary, Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland. Bishop Cleary deals in the following terms with one of Iho principal points raised; — “The priest assists at ordinary marriage ceremonies in New Zealand in a two-fold capacity —(1) He assists as the ollicial representative of the Church, in order to sec to the valid, lawful, and proper colouration of one of the Church’s sacraments. (2) He also assists as a duly gazetted Slate official, charged, as such, with the duly of seeing to the due and proper execution of certain legal formalities connected with the marriage conlracl on its civil side. He has, for instance, to see to the proper tilling in, signing and transmission of the official forms.or registers. In dealing with these, he is not the priest, but the civil official. As such, it is his plain duty to act ad mentem legislatoris—as the law prescribes, and in no* other way. Thus, he is strictly forbidden to insert in the official forms any designation (such as ‘bachelor,’ ‘spinMer,’ ‘illegitimate’), or/any other particular except in the sense attributed to such designation or other particular in the civil law itself, of which he is, for the time being, acting as an official or functionary. Such frankness and openness are demanded of him by the very nature of the office which he has freely undertaken to discharge; and the authorities of the Catholic Church in this Dominion would nut dream of tolerating a legal misdescription by a priest, upon any legal and official form, such as that of a marriage register’.”