ACTION OF VICAR

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 450, 4 June 1937, Page 5

ACTION OF VICAR

RELIGIOUS CEREMONY I ‘ENTIRELY IRREGULAR’ i Bishop Of Fulham Sends Protest Press Association— Copyright. (Received 11.6 a.m.) Lond&n, June 3. The news that Rev. Anderson Jardine, vicar of St. Piaul’f Church,, Darlington, Yorkshire, had gone to France to perform the religious ceremony at the wedding of the Duke of Windsor and Mrs Wallace Warfield came as a great surprise, not only to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Cosmo Lang, but .also to the Bishop of Fulham, Dr. Basil Staunton Batty, under whose jurisdiction the Anglican Church in North and' Central Europe comes. After a consultation between, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Fulham, the following statement was issued with 'the authority of Dr. Lang:— , “If it be true that Mr Jardine ' has undertaken to perform a religious ceremony in connection 1 with the marriage of the Duke of Windsor, the Bishop of Fulham wishes it to be understood that this action of an Anglican clergymain is taken without his knowledge or consent.” The ecclesiastical correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says that Mr Jardine’s action is eniterly irregular. It is understood that the Bishop of Fulham telegraphed Mr Jardine protesting against hit 1 acting without episcopal license or consent. There is, however, no process of ecclesiastical law by which Mr Jardine can be restrained, and so the Bishop’s telegram took the form of a protest, not a prohibition. A message from Tours, France, says that when asked how he knew the Duke desired a religious ceremony and. how he came to mak e his offer, Mr Jardine replied: “It seemed to me unthinkable that any membeiof the Royal Family could be married without a Church of England service.”

’ POSITION OF CHURCH

Statement By Bishop Of Wellington

■“The position of th* church is that the innocent party of a divorce may claim under civil law -to be married in an Anglican Church if the party can secur e a clergyman willing to perform the- ceremony,” sai-di the Bishop of Wellington, Rt. Rev. H. St. Biarbe Holland, explaining the attitude of the Anglican Church at the time of the abdication. “But an interesting fact is that no clergyman can be compelled by law to do it. Very few—only o ne or two her e and there—are willing to marry divorced persons. They feel that the church must stand for the highest moral standards of ma triage. In a case of very great hardship the practice is for th e clergy to advise the parties concerned to have the marriage performed at the registry office and. then, j£ they wUii, come to the church fur its iilessing “In the marriage service of the church both bride and bridegroom take the vow to live as partners ‘until death us do part.’ If the church condoned the marriage of divorced persons it would make a mockery of the oath of life partnership until death intervened. When th e church has set such a high standard of marriage in the first instance it would stultify the marriage oath in marrying divorced persons. The vow does not say ‘until death or adultery doth us part.’ ”