Mixed
marriages are the union of Catholics with non-Catholics. They are called
mixed, on account of the difference of religion between the parties. There
is a married couple. The husband is not a Catholic. He either believes not
in God and in Jesus Christ, or he believes in such a God and Christ as he
fancies. His wife says: "I believe that Jesus Christ is our Lord and God; I
believe in all that He teaches us through the Catholic Church." She says
with Jesus Christ: "Hear the Church." "No," says her husband, "do not hear
the Church, protest against her, with all your might."
With Jesus Christ she says:
" If any one will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and
the publican." "No," says her husband, "if any one does not hear the Church,
look upon him as a good and free man." With Christ she says: " The gates of
hell shall not prevail against the Church." "No," says her husband, "'tis
false; the gates of hell have prevailed against the Church more than a
thousand years ago." She says: " The pope is the Vicar of Christ." "No,"
says her husband, " the pope is Antichrist." She believes in the necessity
of good works; her husband denies it. She believes in the real presence of
Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament; her husband denies it. She believes
in the indissolubility of marriage; her husband does not. She prays to the
Blessed Virgin and the other saints of heaven; her husband declares such a
prayer to be an act of idolatry. Nothing can be more detestable and shocking
than such a union of a Catholic with a non-Catholic.
In a synodal address
published by the hierarchy of Australia, the Right Rev. Prelates speak on
the subject of such unions as follows: "The frequency of mixed marriages is
a terrible blot upon the character of our Catholic community. It is sad to
think with what facility Catholic parents consent to such irreligious
connections, and with how little caution they expose their young people to
social intercourse, where passionate fancy and the thoughtlessness of youth
are certain to entail the danger of mischievous alliances. It is in the main
the fault of the parents more than of the children, who hear so little
warning against mixed marriages--so little denunciation and deprecation of
their dangers and miseries. If young people did hear from the clergy and
from parents, as often and as explicitly as they ought, the sense and
doctrine of the Church concerning such marriages, these unholy unions would
be a far rarer calamity than they are. The generosity of the young would
revolt from such unions, if they saw them in their true light, as a danger
and as a disgrace."
Indeed, experience shows
that those pastors who are zealous in teaching the faithful the dangers of
these marriages, and firm in warning all persons to be prudent in the
control of their passions, have but seldom to apply for a dispensation, and,
when they apply for one, it is based upon the strongest reasons.
This deficiency of
instruction arises, in part, from a certain fear of wounding those who have
already contracted mixed marriages. No doubt, it is a subject that demands
the use of prudent, grave, and measured language. However, where the
salvation of souls is at stake, the Church knows neither silence nor false
delicacy.
There is a license for the
poet, a license for the stage, a license for the bar, a license for the
writer of fiction, a license for the press; and why should there not be a
license for a Christian writer and speaker, for a true minister of Christ?
It is high time for true modesty and delicacy to take the place of false
modesty and delicacy, to which the alarming increase of mixed marriages is
greatly to be attributed.
Our youth must be taught,
in catechism, the law of the Church forbidding mixed marriages. If they are
taught properly, they will be prepared to hear it enlarged upon from the
pulpit. If the prohibition of mixed marriages, and the reasons of such a
prohibition, are made known to them before their passionate fancy is
developed, they will have the Catholic sense and instinct within them to
guard and withhold them before they allow themselves to be entangled in
engagements. If parents are taught to reflect on the dangers inherent to
these marriages, on the real religious disadvantages which attend even the
best of them; if they are taught the great horror in which the Church holds
these marriages, they will be more careful in keeping their children from
the immediate occasion of them, and will be less disposed to encourage them.
Why does the Church disapprove of mixed marriages?
1. Because the Catholic party is exposed to the danger of losing the faith,
or of becoming indifferent to it;
2. because the Catholic education of the children is generally neglected,
and often made impossible;
3. because the non-Catholic party does not believe in the indissolubility of
the bonds of marriage.
In an instruction addressed
by the Holy See, in the year 1858, to all the archbishops and bishops of the
Church, it is explicitly taught that "the Church has always reprobated mixed
marriages, and has held them to be unlawful and pernicious, as well on
account of the disgraceful communion in divine things, as on account of the
danger of perversion that hangs over the Catholic party to the marriage, and
of the disastrous influences affecting the education of children."
Hard and stern as the law
of the Church forbidding mixed marriages may seem to the lax and
indifferent, or even to the better-disposed Catholics who have never
earnestly thought the subject through, it has, in fact, been in force in all
ages. When God, through Moses, gave his divine law to his chosen people,
stern and uncompromising was the prohibition against their mingling in
marriage with the children of unbelief: "Thou shalt not," said he, "make
marriages with them. Thou shalt not give thy daughter to his son, nor take
his daughter for thy son."
If we turn to the law of
Christ and His Church, we shall find that St. Paul lays down a rule for
married converts from paganism, which clearly shows it was never intended
that Christians should marry unbelievers. The apostle tells the Corinthians:
"If any faithful woman hath an unbelieving husband, and he assent to dwell
with her, let her not put him away." "He is not speaking of those who are
not yet married," as St. John Chrysostom explains, "but of those who are
already married. He does not say: If any one wishes to take an unbeliever,
but, if anyone has an unbeliever; that is: if anyone has received faith and
the consort remains in unbelief, and consents to live with the other party,
let no separation be made." "But," says the apostle, "if the unbeliever
depart, let him depart; for a brother or sister is not under bondage in such
cases, but God hath called us in peace. For how knowest thou, O woman,
whether thou shalt save thy husband? Or how knowest thou, O man, whether
thou shalt save thy wife?" The apostle intimates that, if the unbeliever
refuses to live in peace with the converted believer, or wantonly deserts
her, the marriage bond is dissolved. Hence, the law of the Church leaves the
Christian free in such a case to contract a Christian marriage. But this is
limited to the case of an unbeliever who is unbaptized. St. John Chrysostom
says, in explanation of St. Paul's words: "If he orders you to sacrifice to
his idols, or to join him in impious acts in your marriage, or to depart
from him, it is better the marriage be dissolved than that piety should
suffer." But the whole instruction of the apostle implies, if it does not
expressly state, that a marriage between a Christian who is free, and an
unbaptized pagan or an unbeliever, cannot be thought of. Hence, such
marriages, although they are not positively forbidden by any natural or
divine law, have always been forbidden and treated as invalid by the Church,
from the earliest to the latest of her laws.
Again, the apostles
prohibited all social intercourse with heretics. In his second Epistle, St.
John says: " If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive
him not into your house, nor say to him, God speed you. For, he that sayeth
to him, God speed you, communicateth with his wicked work." Now, if the
apostle forbids the faithful to receive heretics into their houses or to
greet them on the way, how can they be allowed to marry them? St. Paul gives
the same rule to Titus: "A man that is a heretic, after the first and second
admonition avoid." And to the Corinthians, he says of one whose husband is
dead: "She is at liberty: let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord."
But to marry in the Lord is to marry in the Church, and to be united to a
member of Christ; and so the fathers interpret the passage. Tertullian says
that, when the apostle says, "'Let her marry only in the Lord,' he is no
longer advising, but strictly commanding; so that, in an affair of this
greatest importance, unless we obey, we perish." (Ad Uxor., 1. ii, c. 1.)
In the year 313, the
Council of Eliberis, in its sixteenth Canon, decrees: "If heretics will not
enter the Catholic Church, the daughters of Catholics must not be given to
them in marriage. They are not to be given to Jews or to heretics, because
there can be no society of believers and unbelievers. If parents act against
this decree, let them abstain from communion for five years." (Harduin's
Concila vol. i, col. 252.)
In 372, the Council of
Laodicea decreed, in its tenth chapter, that "those who belong to the Church
ought by no means to ally their children indifferently with heretics in
matrimony." (Ibid., col. 783.)
In the year 451, the
General Council of Chalcedon, in its fifteenth action, fourteenth canon,
decreed: " Neither ought one, who is marriageable, to contract marriage with
a heretic, a Jew, or a pagan, unless such a one promise to join the orthodox
faith; so that an orthodox person may be united with one who is orthodox. If
anyone shall transgress this definition of the holy synod, he shall be
subject to the canonical correction."
The law forbidding mixed
marriages continued to be reenacted in the middle-ages; and in the year
1309, the Council of Posen, presided over by a papal legate, and confirmed
by Pope Clement VI, in 1346, decrees as follows: "That the Catholic faith,
which spurns the rending spirit of any error whatsoever, may not be stained
with the leaven of any schism or heretical depravity, with the counsel and
consent of this present council, we, by a perpetual edict, prohibit that any
one subject to our legislation, who desires to be held and accounted a
Catholic, shall presume to give his daughter, niece, or other relative, in
marriage to a heretic, to a Patarene, to a Garane, to a schismatic, or to
any other person who is opposed to the Christian faith, so long as they
remain in errors." (Harduin's Concilia, vol. vii, col. 1300.)
In the year 1583, the
Council of Bordeaux, approved by Pope Gregory XIII, in its fifteenth title
on matrimony, decrees as follows: "Let the faithful Catholics be frequently
admonished by their parish priests that they give not their sons and
daughters in marriage to heretics, or to men who are aliens from the
Catholic faith and religion." (Ibid., voL x, col. 1351.)
Let us now turn to the
doctrine and disciplinary decisions of the Holy See, which has ever held one
uniform language on this subject. Especially have the popes peremptorily
declared against mixed marriages since the rise and spread of Protestantism.
And although, in his treatise on Diocesan Synods, the illustrious Benedict
XIV has vindicated the right and authority of the Holy See to grant
dispensations for very grave reasons, and to prevent worse evils, yet, in
his Constitution addressed to the bishops of Poland, the great Pontiff
affirms "the antiquity of that discipline with which the Holy See has ever
reprobated the marriage of Catholics with heretics." He quotes a letter of
Clement XI, in which, replying to a petition for dispensation for a mixed
marriage, the pope says: " We hold it of greater importance not to ever pass
the rules of God's Church, of the Apostolic See, of our predecessors, and of
the canons, unless the good of the whole Christian republic require it." And
in another letter Pope Clement says: ''The Church, in truth, abhors these
marriages, which exhibit much deformity in them, and but little
spirituality."
Benedict XIV, in a decree
referring to Holland and Belgium, declares his "extreme grief that Catholics
can be found, who, disgracefully deluded by an unhealthy affection, neither
abhor these hateful marriages nor abstain from them, even although the
Catholic Church has always condemned and forbidden them; " and he "greatly
commends those prelates who strive, even with severe penalties, to restrain
Catholics from joining themselves in this sacrilegious bond with heretics."
He seriously exhorts and warns all bishops, vicars-apostolic, parish priests
and missioners in Holland and Belgium, "to do their utmost to deter and
hinder Catholics from entering into this kind of marriage." And where a
mixed marriage has already been contracted, "the Catholic party, whether
husband or wife, is to be sedulously brought to repentance for the grievous
sin committed, and to ask pardon of God, and to make all possible endeavors
to bring the party erring from the faith into the bosom of the Church: which
endeavors will contribute greatly toward obtaining pardon for the sin
committed."
In 1858, Pope Pius IX
issued the instruction on dispensing in mixed marriages, and addressed it to
all archbishops and bishops, in which he exhorts them "to keep the holy
teaching of the Catholic Church respecting these marriages most religiously
and in all its inviolable integrity:" With "the ardent zeal of their
pastoral office must they turn away the Catholics entrusted to them from
these mixed marriages, and exactly teach them the doctrine of the Catholic
Church and her laws as affecting these marriages."
Mixed marriages are unlawful and pernicious on account of the
disgraceful communion in divine things.
Mixed marriages are,
indeed, a disgrace, not, perhaps, always in the eyes of the world, but
always in the sight of the Church. How are they to be interpreted? On one
side, there is the Church teaching that matrimony is a sacrament; that the
married life has its own great duties, its own difficulties, for which
special graces of God are necessary, and which are granted by Him; that the
married state is to be entered upon, thoughtfully and solemnly, with careful
preparation of mind and heart; that spouses are to be of mutual help and
encouragement in the grand end of all human life, the life for God and the
next world. This is on one side; and on the other, what is there? A mere
fanciful or passionate attachment, with little enough of worth about it,
even when pure with the utmost natural purity it can have,--a mere
passionate attachment, overlooking, or at least most certainly undervaluing,
the great considerations just stated. Is not this a disgrace?
Or, if the motive to mixed
marriages be an advantageous alliance in respect of money, is it not even
more disgraceful to soil a sacred thing with the sordid calculations of a
commercial bargain?
Or, if the mixed marriage
be coveted because one of the parties possesses some little higher worldly
standing of fashion, or connection, or style,--why, is not the thing still
more contemptibly disgraceful, at least for the Catholic, with the belief
about the one Church, the holiness of the sacraments, the preciousness of
God's grace, and the true end of life?
St. Ambrose calls the
marriage of a Catholic with one who is not a Catholic, sacrilegious, and
Benedict XIV, and other popes after him, have judicially applied to it the
same awful term. Sacrilege is a violation offered to something sacred in
that in which it is sacred. Now, Christian marriage is, in the first place,
a communion in sacred things. But, as St. Paul teaches, there can be no
communion between light and darkness; that is, there can be no religious
communion between one who has the faith, and one who has not the faith. They
cannot communicate in faith, in worship, or in the sacraments. And for one
without faith to communicate in a sacrament is a sacrilege, because it is
the violation of a most sacred thing. Yet marriage in the Catholic Church
involves the sacramental communion.
Secondly, the parties to
the marriage are the dispensers of this great mystery, and, in a mixed
marriage, one of the parties ministers in that solemn act of religion,
having no Catholic faith in the sacrament.
Thirdly, the Catholic
marriage is a communion in the grace of Christ, and in the benediction of
the Church; and, therefore, the parties prepare themselves by purifying
their hearts in the sacrament of penance, and partake together of the body
of Christ. But in a mixed marriage, although the baptism of the heretical
person secures the validity of the marriage, and although, to prevent worse
evils, the Church may very reluctantly grant such a dispensation as to
prevent the unlawfulness of the marriage, yet she withholds her blessing and
forbids the holy sacrifice, and mourns over a union which is neither a
communion in faith nor in grace.
We have seen how a Catholic
marriage represents and signifies the nuptial union between Christ and His
Church, the profound meaning of which sacramentally affects the spiritual
relations of the married pair in Christ, and gives them great
responsibilities in common as members of the Church. But how can the union
between a member of the Church and one who is not one of her members express
the union between Christ and the Church? And how can they fulfill united
duties toward the Church? For such grave reasons as these, has the Church
not hesitated to call mixed marriages sacrilegious, unlawful, and
pernicious.
One of the touching reasons
which God gave to the Israelites not to be married to idolaters was:
"Because thou art a holy people to the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God hath
chosen thee to be His peculiar people of all peoples that are upon the
earth. Not because you surpass all nations in number, is the Lord joined to
you, and hath chosen you, for you are the fewest of any people; but because
the Lord hath loved you, and hath kept the oath which He swore to your
fathers, and hath brought you out with a strong hand, and redeemed you from
the house of bondage." Can a Catholic have realized what it is to have the
high and noble privilege of being one of God's chosen people, of being a
child of Christ's Church, a member of the household of faith,--and yet
prefer to become one flesh, and to live in one spirit, with an alien from
God's Church, rather than with one of God's chosen people?
When St. Frances de Chantal
was urged by her parents to marry a Protestant, she most emphatically
refused their request and said: "I would rather live forever in a prison
than in the house of a Protestant; and I would die a thousand times rather
than marry an enemy of the Church." (Her Life, by Bougand.)
Mixed marriages are also unlawful and pernicious, because the Catholic
party is exposed to great danger of either losing the faith, or of becoming
indifferent to it.
There was a time when to
marry a heretic furnished legal suspicion of either an inclination to
heresy, or to foster heresy. The civil law defined marriage to be a
perpetual life in common between the contracting parties, and a mutual
communication of divine and human rights; and it was argued that, for "a
Catholic to enter of free choice into a life-long union of so intimate a
nature with a heretic, furnished a grave presumption of sympathy with
heresy." (Pitra, in Cons. Apost., vol. iv; Constit. Joannis xxii, nn. 4, 5.)
If, in the beginning of marriage, the Catholic party does not as yet
sympathize with heresy, he or she will soon be in danger of not only
sympathizing with it, but of even falling entirely away from the faith.
In the sixth chapter of
Genesis, it is shown how large a share mixed marriages had in bringing about
that universal corruption which made God say that he "repented of having
made man." For the sons of God, that is, the sons of Seth, the true
believers on earth, married the daughters of unbelief from sensual motives,
"because they were fair." Holy Scripture points to these unions as to the
original cause of that universal corruption, in remedy of which God sent the
purging deluge.
When the generations after
the deluge had sunk anew into corruption, and idolatry had stifled faith and
the true worship of God, the Lord chose the patriarchs to worship him in
faith; and that their faith might be preserved in their descendants, He
inspired them to shun the daughters of the unbelieving races around them,
and to seek their wives even from a distance--from the more religious race
of which they were descended.
When Almighty God led the
Israelites into the Promised Land, He strictly forbade them to give their
sons and daughters in marriage to the idolatrous people of the land; for,
said He, "she" (the idolatrous woman) " will turn away thy son from
following Us, that he may rather serve strange gods, and the wrath of the
Lord will be enkindled and will quickly destroy thee."
Indeed, the whole drift and
provision of God's law were directed toward preserving the faithful from
alliance with the populations that were devoid of faith; and the whole
history of that people from the time of Solomon, and after his sad example,
goes to show that mixed marriages in defiance of God's law, and despite of
the warnings of the prophets, were amongst the chief causes of the
infidelities, impieties, and sacrileges that forfeited for God's people the
divine protection, introduced heathen worship into the very palaces of their
kings and to the gates of their temple, and brought unutterable calamities
on the people. It is impossible to read the Old Testament with attention,
without seeing that the divine prohibition of marriage between believers and
unbelievers was a most benign and merciful dispensation, and that the
neglect of this prohibition was ever attended with evils of the gravest
kind.
Hence, the councils, the
fathers and Pontiffs of all times, proclaim the experience that these
marriages are injurious to faith, and often cause the loss of it, both to
the Catholic parent and the children. The above-quoted Council of Posen
says: "We have learned from experience that men who, through the devil's
instigation, are separated from the Catholic faith, draw their wives,
however Catholic, to the error of unbelief, instead of their wives drawing
them:" "By such marriages," says the Council of Bordeaux, quoted above,
"very many have made shipwreck of the faith." St. Augustine reproves the
marriages of Catholics with schismatics, in these words: "Those miserable
people, believing in Christ, have their food at home in common, but the
table of Christ they cannot have in common. Must we not weep when we so
often see how the husband and wife vow to each other in Christ to have their
bodies faithfully united in one, whilst they rend the body of Christ by
being attached to different communions? Great is the scandal, great the
devil's triumph, great the ruin of souls!" (Epist. 23 to Maximinus, Donatist
Bp.)
There is, as a general
rule, greater danger in the marriage of a Catholic with a heretic, than in
the marriage of a Catholic with a heathen. A Catholic must naturally hold
marriage with a heathen in greater abhorrence than marriage with a baptized
person. And if, in an evil hour, such a marriage were contracted, the dread
of heathen influence would be far greater, and the desire and solicitude for
that heathen's conversion far more earnest.
But a daily familiarity with heresy removes half the dread of it; and
weak Catholics, who are ill instructed, are apt to lose sight of the
immeasurable distance between faith and heretical opinion, between the
security of the Church and absence of all safety outside the Church.
And where the non-Catholic
party to the marriage possesses kindly and attractive qualities, either by
nature or from culture; or where the character of the non-Catholic party is
the stronger of the two, and where the Catholic is drawn away from Catholic
influences and associations, and brought under the anti-Catholic influences
of those with whom the non-Catholic consort habitually associates, it must,
of necessity, require an extraordinary and special gift of grace for that
Catholic to hold to the faith and its duties. Experience shows that many who
are placed in such circumstances fall away from the faith, and too often
carry distressed and tortured consciences to the end of their lives.
To a true Catholic, indeed,
religion is the first of all things--the very law of life. The house of a
Catholic should be a Catholic house. It should be pervaded with a certain
religious tone. and more especially so in the private apartments of the
family. As the house contains a family of God's children, it should be under
the benediction of God. There should be nothing in it to offend the
Christian sense, to awake temptation or to cause disedification. The
crucifix should be found in the place where the family-prayer is performed,
and devout pictures should speak of God and heaven from the walls.
In a mixed marriage, the
house is not Catholic; the family is not Catholic; the atmosphere is not
Catholic; the symbols of faith are not visible. The souls of husband and
wife are locked up from each other; they have no communion of thought or
feeling in the chief concern of life. Think what it is to be never able to
speak or act together in what concerns God, the soul, the Church, or the
life to come! Think what it is to have no joint counsel or community of
feeling in what concerns the spiritual welfare of a family! Think what it is
to have one's faith shut up in the breast, there to pine and faint for want
of full and open exercise in the household and in the family duties!
How often are the visible
tokens of religion removed, to avoid offence, whilst the faith is kept
hidden from sight, like some dangerous secret! Where are the family prayers?
Where is the communion in the sacraments? Happy is the Catholic wife when
she is not thwarted in her way to the Church. How often must she stay at
home, when she would gladly seek some consolation there, until her devotion
grows feeble for want of exercise! Happy is she when her faith and her
Church are left unassailed, and when she is not teased with sectarian
importunities by her husband, or by his relatives and friends. Perhaps (for
this often happens), she is much isolated from her Catholic friends, and
from those who, in the hour of need, could give her support. Happy is she,
then, if at last she does not sacrifice her inward conscience to human
respect and to a shallow exterior tranquility. She has chosen the peril, and
blessed is she if she is saved by a miracle of grace. Yet she has no right
to expect such a miracle.
Happy is the Catholic
husband whose sectarian wife neither oppresses his weaker religious will by
her zeal, nor undermines his faith by the more subtle influences which she
can bring to bear upon him. Even if faith is held to, peace will go. Holy
Scripture says: "Where one buildeth up and another pulleth down, what profit
have they but the labor? Where one prayeth and another curseth, which voice
will God hear? "
Undoubtedly, there are
exceptional cases, where the marriage proceeds happily; and that, not merely
in the complete fulfillment of all the pledges given, but even in the
conversion of the non-Catholic party. Still the overwhelming majority of
examples stands on the opposite side; and who shall venture to foretell that
this or that marriage will turn out happily for the faith, and not for its
destruction? Even in those exceptional cases where the marriage proves happy
in the final result, we must guard against letting them blind us to the fact
that, in far the greatest number of cases, such marriages end unhappily.
Mixed marriages have always been reprobated by the Church, because the
Catholic education of the children is generally neglected, and often made
impossible.
It is the sublime office of
the married pair to present their children to Christ, and with united
solicitude to guide them on the path of faith and charity. But how are their
united strength, authority, and devout influence to accomplish this
important duty as God wishes, when one parent contends for the faith and the
other contends against it? How can they fulfill this duty when, as it often
happens, all promises and pledges are broken, and the children are refused
either a Catholic baptism or a Catholic education? How can either a Catholic
man or a Catholic woman contract a marriage with a safe conscience, where,
granting the influence to be equal on both sides, the parent without faith
must neutralize the influence over the children of the Catholic parent?
The contest not
infrequently begins when there is question of baptizing the first child. The
non-Catholic father will have the boys baptized and brought up in his way.
The non-Catholic mother will have the girls to follow her way. And to the
eyes of the world, there is a semblance of equity in this arrangement; but
the world cannot take into consideration the conscience of the Catholic,
secured before the marriage, the obligation contracted by the sacrament of
matrimony, and the free pledges that have been made on the other side as
essential conditions to the contract.
Sometimes, again, the
non-Catholic father is for Leaving the children free, without being taught
any specific creed, until, as he says, they are able to judge for
themselves; and on this ground the Catholic mother is restrained from
teaching them their religion. It also happens very frequently that the
non-Catholic father declares that no child of his shall ever enter a
Catholic church, or be taught the Catholic catechism or prayers. Sometimes,
wearied with the contest, the weak mother will at last exclaim, like the
woman before Solomon's judgment-seat who was not the true mother: "Let it be
neither mine nor thine, but let it be divided." And as there is no Solomon
to settle the point of justice, a compromise is effected, which is followed
by coldness toward religion, a neglect of its duties, a weakening of faith,
and other such fatal effects which are most hurtful to the soul.
Again, there is the
benumbing influence of human respect, so potent over weak souls, and the
fear of offending those who may benefit the children in a temporal point of
view. Then there are those terrible trials to the child's heart, who, loving
both parents equally, finds them opposed to each other in all that concerns
God, the soul, and the religious life. To one dear parent, the question of
religion as between parent and child is a forbidden topic; and happy is the
child when it has not to witness the contest about the guidance of its
soul,--a contest that cannot fail to wound parental influence, as well as
filial reverence. Ah! what is to be expected from children who hear one
thing from one parent, and the contrary from the other--who see that what
the one approves, the other condemns--that what the one reverences, the
other ridicules? What is to be expected in such circumstances but that the
poor children should become cold and indifferent about all religion; or at
best,-- like those unhappy Israelites who halted between the Lord and
Baal,--halt all their days between the Church of Christ and heresy or
infidelity, and at last fall under the condemnation of those of whom our
Saviour says: "He that is not with me, is against me"? (Luke xi, 23.)
There is a congregation in
one of the Middle States which numbers about two hundred families. There are
not fewer than fifty-seven mixed marriages in it. The number of converts is
but six, and the number of those who gave up the Catholic religion is
twenty-two. As to the children, there are at present found fifty-four who
are being instructed in the rudiments of our religion, and it is hoped that
they will adhere to the practice of her doctrines. But there are one hundred
and thirty-seven who are receiving their religious training in some
religious sect, or are left to grow up in utter ignorance. There are
thirty-one more, whose ultimate end is as yet doubtful. The number of
perverted Catholics is nearly four to one in this congregation. There is no
reason to believe that mixed marriages are less productive of evil in other
congregations.
The non-Catholic party does not believe in the indissolubility of the
bonds of marriage.
There is one reflection,
were there no other unpleasant consequences to be anticipated, which should
make the Catholic party, before contracting a mixed marriage, pause and
consider: "The young man whom I intend to marry today, does not believe that
the bonds of marriage cannot be dissolved. He may therefore forsake me
tomorrow, or at any time he chooses. And while I cannot contract another
marriage during his lifetime, I may be forced to endure every privation;
perhaps I may even find it necessary to beg a morsel of bread. The
consolation of having my children--should God in time bless me with any--by
my side may not be granted: I may be forced to confide them to unfriendly
hands." On this account M. de Stolberg wrote to a young person whom he was
endeavoring to dissuade from contracting a mixed marriage: "Do you know, my
child, to what a temptation to apostasy you are about to expose yourself?
Are you able to resolve the doubts which will be proposed to you by learned
men--perhaps by Protestants still attached to the false doctrines of Luther
and Calvin, of whom the number is daily diminishing, or more probably by
Protestants, who turn all religion into ridicule, and retain no more of
their own than they like: unbelievers, of whom the majority regard Jesus
Christ merely as a wise man? Will you never feel any false shame when they
see you go to confession,--they who regard confession of sins as an
ignominious and insupportable yoke? Will you never be disturbed or shaken by
the ideas which your husband entertains regarding the sacred mystery in
which the Godman is veiled, and gives Himself under the most humble outward
appearance to us Catholics? Is it a feeling of satisfaction and tranquility
that you will experience when you reflect that he cannot, by participating
in the same sacrament, share with you the blessing whereof our Saviour spoke
to St. Thomas: 'Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed'? That
you cannot, kneeling together before the holy sacrament, both share in that
promise: 'I am with you always to the end of the world;' or rejoice mutually
in the proper meaning of the assurance that He will ever remain with the
successors of the apostles to preserve His Church from all error? Will it
conduce to your tranquillity when your husband is attacked by serious
illness, and you see death approaching, without his being able to receive
the sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ--penance, the holy Eucharist,
extreme unction?
"You probably dwell with
pleasure on the thought of nursing your little ones, and of seeing a
numerous family spring up around you. But, before God entrusts you with
these children, your husband will probably tell you that none of his
children shall ever be allowed to become a Catholic. Will you be firm enough
to oppose him in this point?
"And he who tells you this,
does not pledge himself to be your husband forever! His religion authorizes
him to forsake you in order to contract ties which Jesus Christ has declared
to be adulterous. And this husband, who merely lends himself to you, while
you give yourself without reserve to him, is either without religion, and
then he leaves you without security for his fidelity; or he is attached to
his false worship, and in that case he will soon repent of having married
you. But, whether he is indifferent or zealous, he will always try to make
you adopt his principles.
"In a word, you will either
continue thoughtless, as you are at present--and then what dangers threaten
you!--or your eyes will be opened to your real position, and you will be
every day more distressed at seeing yourself separated, in what is of the
highest importance, from your own children, whom you will have excluded from
the Church, the mother of all the faithful, whom you will have sacrificed to
what you know to be error, and perhaps to everlasting perdition."
A young woman had a
practice of going to the dancing houses. One evening, in the dancing-house,
she made acquaintance with a Protestant young man: they danced and talked
with each other. The time passed on, and it was getting late. The Protestant
young man asked her if she would marry him. She was silent for a few
moments. She remembered very well she had often heard the priest say it is a
very bad thing for Catholics to marry Protestants, or those of any other
religion--that God does not bless these marriages. No matter; she answered,
"Yes"--she promised to marry him. What else could you expect in a dancing
house? The evil spirit of the dancing-house moved her to give that answer.
That angel guardian whom God had given her to take charge over her in all
her ways (Ps. xc), was not with her. How could he go into a bad dancing
house? So, even if she had thought of saying a short prayer to her good
angel before giving that important answer, on which her future happiness or
misery depended, he was not there to listen to it. They do not think about
these things in dancing-houses. Before the marriage, the young man made many
fine promises how she should go to Mass every Sunday, and he would go with
her, and the children should be christened by the priest, and brought up
Catholics. Very likely, he said, he would become a Catholic himself. This
marriage took place--a dancing-house marriage! She was married to the
Protestant young man.
It was a bright, sunshiny
morning, the morning of the marriage. There were dark clouds not very far
off. The Protestant young man behaved pretty well to his wife for a few
months. It is true he quarreled with her sometimes. He forgot his promises,
and beat her because she wanted to go to the Catholic church on Sundays. He
sometimes threw her prayer-book into the fire, and spoke against the
doctrines of the Catholic Church. She was silent and patient. She knew that
it was a just punishment from God for marrying a Protestant: "For by what
things a man sinneth, by the same also is he punished." (Wisd. xi.) That
marriage had been made, and it was too late to unmake it. At last the dark
cloud came! The Protestant young man came home one day to his dinner. He sat
down to the table and began to eat. The meat was not to his liking. There
was sulky anger on his face. He was silent for a few moments. At last he
stood up on his feet, holding the knife clenched in his hand, fury and rage
flashing from his eyes. He cursed his wife, and said: " You Popish beast, I
will stick you with this knife, and take every drop of Popish blood out of
you!" The wife turned deadly pale. She fell off the chair. Her senses were
gone with the fright.
She got back her senses
again, but it was only to live for a day or two. She died of the shock which
the fright had given her! And now she lies buried near the wall of a
Catholic burial-ground in Lancashire. So ended the dancing-house marriage.
So ended the marriage of a Catholic with a Protestant. Those who care about
their own happiness will never marry those who are not Catholics: " Know ye
for a certainty that, if you make marriages with them.... they shall be a
pit and a snare in your way, and a stumbling-block at your side, and stakes
in your eyes." (Jos. xxiii.--Furniss' Tracts.)
It is only a few years ago
that a priest was called to see a dying woman, who had not been to her
duties for twenty years. Some of her children were baptized by Protestant
ministers, others were not baptized at all. Her husband was a Protestant,
who would never allow her to attend to her religious duties, nor to bring up
her children in the Catholic religion. He took care that no priest should
speak to his wife before her death. Knowing that a Catholic friend of his
wife had sent for the priest, he gave her, in the meantime, some medicine,
which made her unconscious until she died.
Ah! how happy would it be
for many a Catholic, if, instead of going to his nuptials, he had gone to
his grave! Then he would have to render an account for only one; now,
hundreds may rise up in judgment against him, because he was instrumental in
bringing up a generation of heretics or unbelievers. How often do we not
hear the phrase: "I am a friend of the Catholics, for my father was once a
member of that Church;" or, "My mother ought to be a Catholic"! Expressions
like these bear a terrible testimony against the person fallen away from the
faith, and tell of a wretched soul bartered to satisfy the cravings of an
unholy love.
Does the Church permit mixed marriages?
Yes, on condition: 1, that
there is a grave reason for such a marriage; 2, that the Catholic party is
allowed the free exercise of religion; 3, that all the children be brought
up in the Catholic religion ; 4, that the Catholic party will do his best to
persuade the non-Catholic to embrace the true faith.
For a Catholic to form a
union so intimate as that of marriage with one who is not a Catholic, has
been, at all times and in all places, forbidden by the Church. In this
universal law common to the whole Church, no local bishop has authority to
dispense. The Vicar of Christ, as visible head of the Church, and he alone,
moved by sufficient reasons, can dispense with this ecclesiastical law.
Benedict XIV says that it was extremely rare for his predecessors to
dispense in mixed marriages, except on condition that heresy was renounced;
and even then, only in the case of the marriage of sovereign princes, and to
prevent great evils to the commonwealth.
"If anything of the
severity of the canons," says Pius IX, in his instruction on dispensing in
mixed marriages, "is relaxed in dispensing by authority of the Holy See in
mixed marriages, that can only be done for grave reasons, and with very
great reluctance."
According to an instruction
of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda, in 1868, the precautionary
promises exacted of the contracting parties are by no means a warrant of
themselves for obtaining a dispensation. Reasons for the dispensations must
be assigned that actually arise out of the individual case, and that are
"altogether just and grave." For, "the precautionary conditions are exacted
by the natural and the divine law, and that for avoiding the intrinsic
dangers inherent in mixed marriages; but there must be some grave difficulty
impending over the faithful that cannot otherwise be removed, before they
can be allowed to expose their faith and morals to grave risks."
These last words sum up the
judicial responsibility resting on the person who grants the dispensation.
There must be grave risks impending over the faithful that cannot otherwise
be removed, to justify the grant of the dispensation. Will it justify any
Catholic to make these risks or bring them about, with the view of pleading
them as a ground for dispensation? This would be in fraud of the law; and no
one has a right to profit by this fraud, or to claim an indulgence or a
privilege, whose plea is set up in a fraud. Can there be a greater fraud
than for a Catholic to go and engage himself to marry one who is not a
Catholic, and then to come and plead the engagement as a ground for
dispensation? This is but a cunning way of trying to wrest from the Church
both her law and her judgment: it can be followed by no blessing.
Where a marriage is
canonically unlawful in itself, there can be no espousals, and no engagement
binding before the Church, until the legal impediment is removed. No
Catholic is justified in contracting such an engagement until a dispensation
has been previously obtained. The farthest extent to which the Catholic can
go is to have it clearly understood that everything must depend on the
condition that a proper dispensation is obtained; and he or she should make
no irrevocable engagement until it is obtained.
Now, it is solely in virtue
of a special delegation from the Sovereign Pontiff, which is granted for a
limited time, or a limited number of cases, and on the conditions he
prescribes, that a bishop can dispense in regard to mixed marriages. But the
very fact that, in granting these dispensations, a bishop must act, not as
an ordinary but as a delegated judge, and in face of the universal law, must
necessarily deepen the sense of responsibility. Hence, the Sacred
Congregation of the Propaganda, in 1868, wrote to the bishops of the
Catholic Church: "Wherefore we earnestly request of your charity that you
strive and put forth your efforts, as far as in the Lord you can, to keep
the faithful confided to you from these mixed marriages, so that they may
cautiously avoid the dangers which are found in them. But you will gain this
object the more easily, if you have care that the faithful be seasonably
instructed on the special obligation that binds them to hear the voice of
the Church on this subject, and to obey their bishops, who will have to give
a most strict account to the Eternal Prince of pastors, not only for
sometimes allowing these mixed marriages for most grave reasons, but for too
easily tolerating the contracting of marriages between, the faithful and
non-Catholics, at the will of those who ask it."
These are very solemn
words. They point to exceedingly grave responsibilities in bishops who grant
dispensations in mixed marriages. The Pontiffs, having the evils of mixed
marriages in view.--even when, for the purpose of preventing greater evils,
they grant their dispensations,-- declare, not only that they grant them
"with extreme reluctance," but that they grant them, " as it were
dissembling certain things." Of this, both Benedict XIV and Pius VI made a
solemn declaration at the foot of the crucifix. To any faithful Catholic
contemplating such a marriage, this is awful to reflect upon. It is awful to
the bishop who has to exercise his delegated power in granting such
dispensations. It is awful to the priest who has to deal with the case.
Now, if the Holy See, for a
very grave reason, grants a dispensation in the law prohibiting mixed
marriages, it is only upon the following conditions:
1. The Catholic party must be left free in the exercise of the Catholic
religion; 2, the children must be brought up Catholics; 3, the Catholic
party must promise to endeavor, by prayer, good example and other prudent
means, to effect the conversion of the non-Catholic party.
No Catholic can in
conscience enter upon a mixed marriage without having the fullest guarantees
that the children will be brought up in the Catholic faith and worship. But
what guarantees can be held secure when experience shows that the most
solemn pledges are constantly broken? In many cases they are treated with
absolute contempt and scorn. Severe as these words are, they are the
severity of truth; for, alas! not few are the persons who hold to no point
of honor where the Catholic religion is concerned.
It would be as unjust as
ungenerous not to admit that there are non-Catholics who faithfully keep the
promises which they made in marriage with Catholics, and truly respect the
Catholic faith and religious exercises, and fulfill their pledges concerning
the Catholic education of their children.
But prudence looks to what
generally happens, and not to the exceptional cases. And wisdom never runs
any serious risks in matters of the soul. The individuals, and even the
families, that have fallen away from the faith through mixed marriages,
amount to numbers incredible to those who have not examined the question
thoroughly; and the number of Catholics bound at this moment in mixed
marriages, who live in a hard and bitter conflict for the exercise of their
religion for themselves and for their children, and in certain cases for the
soundness of their moral life, would, could all the facts be known, deter
any thoughtful Catholic from contracting a mixed marriage.
Hence, although the Church
reluctantly grants a dispensation in the bare hope of saving the Catholic
party from worse evils, yet she looks at such an unnatural and unholy union
with a face, as it were, half turned away; and to show her utter displeasure
and sorrow at such an unholy alliance, she does not allow the banns to be
published, nor permit the parties to enter the contract in the church before
the holy altar--no, not even in the sacristy; the holy sacrifice is not
offered up, nor is the priest allowed to impart to the parties the holy rite
of nuptial benediction. If the priest is permitted to be present, it is only
as a witness, divested of every sacred vestment. He is not allowed to
perform any sacred ceremony whatever whilst the parties are repeating the
words of the marriage contract. With what consistency could the Church bless
that which she declares to be sacrilegious?
Clement Augustus,
Archbishop of Cologne, endured much suffering for his unceasing opposition
to mixed marriages. The King of Prussia peremptorily commanded him to bless
the marriages of Catholics and Protestants; but he firmly declined to do
that which his conscience taught him to look upon with horror. One night his
enemy, the king, had the archbishop's palace surrounded by troops, and in
the dead of the night the aged and suffering prelate was torn from his bed,
and hurried off to the fortress of Minden, where, for a long time, he was
kept in the most rigorous captivity. He was approaching his sixty-fifth year
when all this occurred. Eight years more of trial and glory were destined to
complete his triumph. During that period the King of Prussia passed to his
great account, and Clement Augustus soon followed him. The one has gone down
to his grave with all the infamy which so justly attaches to a religious
persecutor, whilst the unmerited sufferings and unshaken fortitude of the
archbishop have excited the sympathy and admiration of Europe. His history
is now blended with that of the Church of the nineteenth century. He will
take his place amongst the most illustrious defenders of her liberties
against the unjust aggressions of the civil power; and posterity will one
day rank him with a Pius VII and a St. Thomas of Canterbury. (The Catholic
Offering.)