Religion: On Mixed Marriage

Before the Full Synod of the Convocation of York, the Most Reverend and Right .Honorable Cyril Forster Gar-bett spoke his liberal, 71-year-old mind. His subject: the marriage of Anglicans and Roman Catholics. Britain’s tall, second-ranking prelate found nothing good in the conditions imposed by the Roman church on such unions. .

His chief objection: the Roman Catholic requirement that both parties to a mixed marriage sign a document .in which they promise that “all the children, of both sexes, who may be born of our Marriage, shall be baptized in the Catholic Church, and shall be carefully brought up in the knowledge and practice of the Catholic Religion.” Said York: “I feel it necessary to warn Anglicans against signing this document, and to ask them to do their utmost to dissuade members of our Church from doing so. It means that Anglican fathers or mothers married to Roman Catholics are deprived of the right to influence the spiritual and religious upbringing of their children. It means disloyalty to the Church of their baptism and of their fathers. It is a humiliating condition. …”

Spiritual Provincialism? Britain’s Catholic Herald was quick to point out that the Archbishop of York’s thrust followed close on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s statement, during his U.S. visit in September, that “the ‘iron curtain’ interposed by the Roman Catholic Church against the Protestant churches is the greatest single obstacle in the way of … [Christian] unity.” Editorialized the angry Herald: “Here we have the two highest dignitaries of the Church of England suddenly complaining in pointed language about well-established Catholic teaching and discipline. . . . Provincialism, whether in spiritual or political matters, is becoming an increasingly dangerous outlook.

“. . . We must add to our sense of the disastrous foolishness in present conditions of this sniping and gibing . . . our surprise that so little is being done to reciprocate the constant Catholic invitation to better relations. . . .”

Meanwhile, both sides waited to see how many Catholic-loving Anglicans would answer the Archbishop’s call to resist signing the marriage pledge.