The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1909. 'THE LAND OF EASY DIVORCE'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 9, 4 March 1909, Page 341

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1909. 'THE LAND OF EASY DIVORCE'

MERICA leads the lurid processon of the nations that are busily engaged in compass- , ing the ruin of true family life by making the marriage tie a slip-knot. It has long been apparent to even the most casual observer that the number of divorces granted in. the United ' States has been constantly and alarmingly on the increase. But, in the absence of official figures, the estimates formed by individuals, however carefully framed, could only be conjectural. Thanks, however, to the recent piiblication by the U.S. Government Census Bureau" of a compendium of authoritative statistics on marriage and divorce, the exact position is now known with absolute accuracy; and the state of affairs which the official figures disclose is sufficient to stagger even the Americans themselves. Which is a hard saying, but true. According to , this document, nearly a million divorces have been granted within twenty years. That is to say, there have been during that time in the - United States nearly a million "matrimonial shipwrecks, and no less than one marriage out of every twelve has ended in the dishonor of the Divorce Court. ' The investigation just concluded by the Census Bureau covers the twenty -years ending with 1906. This report, in turn, supplements one prepared twenty years ago, the two. thus together covering a period of forty years. " The detailed figures, which are contained in Census Bulletin 96, are summarised as follows by the "Washington correspondent of the London Morning Post in its issue of January 6 : ' For the twenty years from 1887 -to 1906 there were 945,625 divorces reported, against 328,716 in the period embraced in the earlier investigation, 1867 to 1886. An increase of 30 per cent, in population between the years 1870 and 1880 was accompanied by an increase of 79 per cent, in the number of divorces granted. In the next decade, 1880 to 1890, the population increased 25 per cent., and the divorces 70 per cent.,, and in the following decade, 1890 to 1900, an increase of 21 per cent, in population was accompanied by an increase of 66 per cent, in the number of divorces; In the six years from 1900 to 1906 population', as estimated,- increased 10.5 per cent, and divorces 29.3 per cent. Divorces, therefore, have increased about three times as fast as the population, or are now, as already stated; about one to -every twelve marriages.' The present average of divorces is 66,000 annually, and after allowance for increase of population has been made it is found that divorce is two and a half times as common now,. as it was forty years ago. In his Jonathan and Bis Continent, Max O Rell tells the story of an American railroad station (or depot, as they call it there) which bore the .legend: 'Train stops here twenty minutes for divorce.' If the present American high-pressure speed in legally emancipating misfit or disgruntled couples is maintained, Max O'Rell's story may soon be translated into sober fact. There is no national divorce law in Anferica ; each State has its own code. To North Carolina belongs the proud distinction of being the only State in which marriage is regarded by law as mdissoluble. In the rest the tired Benedict is presented with an almost embarrassing variety of means by which he can slip the marital leash. ' Desertion, non-support, cruelty, adultery, drunkenness, and incompatibility ot tern-

per are the commonest. But there are others galore. la one State, fqr example (as a Council Bluffs lawyer puts it), ' a wife may sue for divorce if her husband happens to come in cross and talks harshly to her,, injuring her feelings and causing her to cry ; s or if he fails to provide her with the hired girl she may deem essential to her comfort \ or if he is at all lax in the thousand-and-one attentions which his wife might demand as a right.' Aggressive toe-nails and cold feet have (if newspaper accounts speak truly) been accepted as grounds of divorce. And 'Mr. Dooley's ' statement of the position is, in fact, hardly an exaggeration : 'In Nebrasky th' shackles arre busted because father forgot to wipe his boots; in New York because mother knows a judge in South Dakota.' According to the Census Bureau document, desertion was deemed by the" courts sufficient ground for granting the application in 38 per cent, of the cases. According to the same report, out of the whole multitude of divorce cases only some 15 per cent, were contested, and it is stated that ' probably in many of these cases the contest was hardly more than a formality.' From these facts it would appear that when a couple have come to the conclusion that a change is desirable, all the Irusband has to do is to ' spill over ' into some other State ; then the wife .pleads desertion, the husband fails to appear, and the thing is done. We have not got quite that length in New Zealand yet, Viit we are mpying. The New Zealand Official Year Booh for 1907 shows that, with the increased facilities for divorce provided by our Act ~bf 1898, the number of divorces rose from 32 in 1898 to 126 in 1905. We are, in point of fact, proving on a small scale what every country in the world has proved that has once tampered with the sacredness of the marriage tie — we_ are proving that when once you have allowed an opening, however small, in the direction of divorce, it is only a matter of time when you have to open the whole door. Let the nose of the camel get into the tent, and it will not be long till his whole body has entered. If there is one point more than another on which history — mere secular history — has vindicated the teaching and practice of the Catholic Church, it is in respect to her attitude on this great question of divorce.

The revelations of the Census Bureau have an even graver import than a mere surface consideration of the figures would disclose. In order to ascertain the true significance of any movement it is necessary to look at the principles which underlie it. And the principles that are at the bottom of the present divorce movement are simply the spread of materialism and the practical denial of Christianity. In* his Conversion of the Northern Nations, Merivale says : 'If a man denies Christianity, h«5 will straightway deny the spiritual claims of woman. So threaten all modern unbelief and scepticism. To the woman the denial of the Gospel would be at once a fall from the consideration she now holds among us. She would descend again to be the mere plaything of man, the transient companion of his leisure hour, to be held loosely as the chance gift of a capricious fortune.' That is precisely the trend which events are taking in America to-day." Cardinal Gibbons, when asked by an interviewer for his opinion regarding the Government figures, described therti as ' appalling,' and declared : ' Divorce is becoming so prevalent that marriage is getting to be little • better than a system of free love.' That is the true significance of the Census Bureau statistics in a nutshell. The breaking loose from Christian faith and practice is carrying people back to the pagan or ' chattel ' view of woman and wife that was revived by the apostles of infidelity who headed the French Revolution. What that view was the following passage from Rousseau makes sufficiently clear : ' Women are specially made to please men. . . All their education should be relative to men. To please them, to he useful to them, to make themselves loved and honored by them, to bring them up when "young, to take care of them when grown up. to counsel, to console them, "to make their lives agreeable and pleasant — these, in all ages, have been the duties of women, and it is for these duties that they should be educated from infancy.' Rousseau would, in addition, permit woman no religious freedom or rights of conscience. Such was the position of woman under ancient paganism and under the French infidel regime of the Revolution. If she ever becomes similarly degraded again it will be by the modern paganism that ignores Christianity. *

,-■> The remedy for the rodent ulcer that is eating into the very vitals of the social system in America is, to Catholics, clear and obvious. It was indicated by Cardinal Gibbons in the interview already referred to. The present deplorable state of things, said his Eminence, 'is the result of a false, loose interpretation of the Gospel. Every one of the Gospels is opposed to divorce. If divorce is

to be checked, there must be a stricter regard -for." the truths of the Christian religion as they axe taught by the Catholic Church. If we profess to be Christians, let us be Christians.' That" is the beginning and end of the matter. Checks and palliatives there may be — such as stricter legislation and a policy of social ostracism towards divorced people — but when all is said and done there is but one remedy for this distemper, and that is the absolute prohibition of divorce in accordance with the teaching of the Gospel and the inflexible rule of the Catholic Church. The discontented owner of an unshapely cur fancied he could beautify it by cutting two inches from its tail. 'If you want to make the dog beautiful,' said a philosophic friend, ' you must cut his tail off two inches behind the ear.' It is only by a similarly drastic application of the knife that the divorce canker — the ugliest and most loathsome portent in modern Bociety — can be fully and finally destroyed.