The Church and Christian Marriage

WHAT is this Mrs. McCann row about? What is the Decree Ne temere ? Such are the questions we hear asked on every side. People defend or condemn the agitation about Mrs. McCann according to their different religious beliefs and political opinions. To some, like Mr. Campbell, K.C., it is the protest of freemen "against an act of intolerable aggression on the part of a foreign power." To others it is partly a political agitation, and partly the work of the old microbe of Protestant ascendency and intolerance, which was supposed to have been exterminated, but which, they say, is still with us, alive and active, producing a paroxysm of passion, because, forsooth, the Pope of Rome did not enter into diplomatic relations with the ministers of the "Reformed" religion in Ireland before promulgating his recent marriage regulations. Speaking of Rome, The Church of Ireland Gazette writes: " It is not long since her priests dare not perform a marriage between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic."* There is the cause of the agitation, people say: the memory of the days of full-blown ascendency, and madness at the thought that the Catholic Church now insists on having the marriages of Catholics in Ireland, even mixed marriages, celebrated according to general ecclesiastical law. I offer no opinion myself about the relative merits of these explanations. I prefer to treat of the doctrine and discipline of the Church in relation to Christian marriage. And it will be found that the Church's marriage doctrine is sacred and sublime, and that her discipline is not unreasonable even in cases such as the case of Mrs. McCann.