"MIXED" MARRIAGES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 295, 25 September 1873, Page 6

"MIXED " MARRIAGES.

Several letters have lately appeared in the London "Times," complaining. of the refusal 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 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, solemnized in the parish church, any further ceremony, unknown to the law, which both or either of the parties might desire, being added at their discretion. But when, some five-and-thirty years ago, the option of civil marriage, either at the registrar's office, or by his attendance at the religious service in a Noncomformist place of worship, was introduced, this ceased to be necessary. It is true, indeed, as has been lately pointed out in connection with Mr. Osborne Morgan's preposterous Burials Bill, 'that a large proportion of Dissenters still prefer being married at church rather than at the registrar's office or their own chaples. But where both parties are Roman Catholics, they naturally elect to be united by priests of their own faith, and see no reason for repeating the ceremony elsewhere. When, however, one party was a Protestant, or at least: & member of the Church of England, it became usual for the Anglecan ceremony to follow the Roman Catholic, nor was any difficulty till very recently experienced in carrying out this arrangement. It was also stipulated by the Catholic authorities that their own right should take precedence, so as to avoid repeating a marraige already validly I effected. But a papal dispensation is required for these unions, and for this certain conditions were imposed, Formerly, we believe, an agreement that the boys born of the marraige should be brought up in the religion of their father, and the girls in the religion of their mother was generally accepted, and most of us have come across families of mixed religons both in England ! and abroad. But since Cardinal Wiseman's time an express stipulation that all the children should be baptised and educated as Catholics has been rigidly insisted upon in this country. No interference, however, with the received custom of repeating the marraige ceremony was attempted, as a Roman Catholic priest writing to the Times seems to imagine, till long after the change in the law. It was only when Dr Manning became Archbishop of Westminster that he lost no time in issuing a strict prohibition to his clergy against celebrating any such marriage until they had obtained an assurance that the Anglican ceremony would not be superadded. With the motive of this induction we need not here concern ourselves, further than to say that it is obvJously intended to discourage mixed marriages, which Ultramontanes are never tired of denoucing, and which, according to several official — and therefore now infallable-mutterancea of Popes, the Church " abominates and detests."

The ball and banquet given to the Shah of Persia at Guildhall, cost £25, 000; the invitation cards alone, which were elegantly emblazoned with the ShaWa aratorial bearings, «ge #tisto.