Religion: Mrs. Belmont Broods

Racing across the Atlantic to England last week, the S. S. Berengaria celebrated Thanksgiving with a dinner. At the Captain’s table sat Her Majesty, Queen Marie of Rumania. At a small table, separate, alone, brooded Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, champion of the independence of women, mother of Consuelo Vanderbilt, who was onetime Duchess of Marlborough (TIME, Nov. 22, Nov. 29). Mrs. Belmont avoided other passengers; when asked to speak, refused; between meals sat reading. At times the book would rest in her lap, neglected, while her eyes saw far away.

Meanwhile the Sacred Rota of Rome, harried by indignant Protestants, published the testimony it swore it received before annulling the marriage of Consuelo Vanderbilt to the Duke of Marlborough. This revealed breathtaking details. Before the Roman Catholic Diocese of Southwark, Eng., it stated, the Duke of Marlborough with Consuelo, his onetime Duchess, and Mrs. Belmont, her mother, and Mrs. Mary V. S. Tiffany, Consuelo’s aunt, and Mrs. Lucy Jay, family friend, confirmed the following: In 1895, Consuelo Vanderbilt was secretly engaged to one Winthrop Rutherfurd. Her mother discovered so; commanded separation on grounds of social prestige. Consuelo demurred. Her mother threatened to shoot Mr. Rutherfurd, and go herself to the gallows; invited the young Duke of Marlborough to her home at Newport, where for two weeks he saw Consuelo. The Duke, departing for a U. S. tour, asked Consuelo’s hand. Consuelo demurred. The day after his departure, Mrs. Belmont announced his engagement to her daughter. A few weeks later, the Duke returned, a few days later was married. Twenty days later, testified the Duke, his bride told him her part in the foregoing details.

Winthrop Rutherfurd married in 1920; now lives in Manhattan. Interviewed, he admitted he “admired” Miss Vanderbilt at the date in question; declined further comment. With these distressing revelations coming thick and fast, the Protestant half of Manhattan recalled that there was still a pronunciamento to come, a review of all the premises and conclusions which would undoubtedly clear the air, explain all. This would be the self-volunteered statement promised by Protestant Episcopal Bishop Manning. The Bishop, Society remembered, had once known sharp-tongued Mrs. Belmont; had excluded her name, as divorcee, from the year book of a charity home that she herself had founded in his diocese. The Bishop, in short, was keenly interested in Society; he knew Society; he would be able to clarify the special significance of this ducal affair. Before a congregation of 1,000 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Bishop delivered himself. “This action of the Vatican cannot be passed over. It seems to be incumbent upon me to express to our clergy and people, and to any others who are interested, my judgment in the matter.” The action of Rome, he pursued, “seems wholly at variance with the teaching of the Roman Church as to the sacredness of marriage. . . . What right has a Vatican court to pass upon the validity of marriage between members of another communion, solemnized in a Protestant Episcopal Church in New York, under the laws of the U. S. . . . There is much evidence which runs counter to the decision. . . . That any woman of middle age, after years of married, life, should be willing to swear that her parents sold her for worldly gain, and against her will, is a scandal. . . .” He came to his evident point: “If couples who have lived years in wedlock can procure annulments merely by discovering that undue pressure in some form was used at the time of their marriage, divorce will become unnecessary.”

Roman Catholics devoted no time to answering a question which rose to the lips of many a Protestant: “Why does the Roman Catholic Church refuse to grant a divorce to a man and woman who have lived in civil wedlock; but instead grants an annulment, of which one effect is to inform the unhappy pair that they have been living together in an unmarried state?”

Brushing aside this question of principle, the Roman Catholic clergy pointed out the perfect technical propriety of the Vanderbilt-Marlborough annulment by the Rota, a court so august that the sheer weight of its legal machinery prevents it being set in motion except in behalf of litigants of some consequence. Said Father Parsons, editor of the Roman Catholic Weekly America, speaking over the radio at Manhattan: “Let it be remembered that the Rota has been sitting on cases such as this since 1323. For over 900 years persons having grounds for believing that their marriages are invalid have appeared before it, producing their evidence . . . and the Rota after weighing this testimony renders its opinion. . . . Moreover, let it be remembered, the decision of the Rota was a declaration and was not a decree. … I am profoundly puzzled by Biship Manning’s attitude. . . . The persons involved, though of Bishop Manning’s own communion, voluntarily presented themselves before the Rota and sought its opinion.”

Said the Rev. Dr. John Haynes Holmes, pastor of the Community Church Manhattan: “The action of the Pope is as impudent as it is illegal. … It implies that the Duke and the Duchess lived together 25 years without being married.”

Catholics pointed out that the Rota is not the Pope.

Meanwhile the “High Church” Episcopalian weekly, the Living Church gleefully cried: “Give us, good Rota, some nice Latin words to use for a husband whose husbandship you have removed, and a wife upon whose wifehood you have trampled, for a marriage whose holy, sacramental character you have spurned and for a relationship to children which you have degraded unfathomably. . . . How can one be sure he is married? Marriage standards in Rome and Soviet Russia appear to be approaching a common plane.”

Preacher John Roach Straton cried from his Baptist pulpit: “The pot is calling the kettle black!… I agree with Bishop Manning that the Catholic Church has invaded the precincts of his sect, but the Episcopal Church in its relation to other denominations has assumed very much the same attitude of self-appointed superiority.”

While U. S. clerics thus fulminated some British newspapers devoted scarcely ten lines to Bishop Manning’s remarks, and the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to open his lips. Frenchmen and Italians read attentively a statement by Monsignor Massimi, Auditor of the Sacred Rota: “The declaration that the Rota’s action was an intrusion and an impertinence leaves It unmoved because this is not the viewpoint of the Catholic Church. . . . The Catholic Church deems the Rota capable of examining the annulment not only of Protestant but of Jewish and Moslem marriages if the grounds are sufficient according to canon law. . . . Canon law regarding marriages is strictly according to divine law, which neither Protestants, Moslems nor Jews can dispute.”

Aboard the Berengaria, sailing toward the land of the Duchy of Marlborough, feminist Mrs. Belmont read on in her book, her face impassive.