“The invalidity was that of the sacramental and not of the legal marriage, and what the Church said to one of her subjects in such circumstances was: ‘You are married; you are a husband; but you may not receive the sacrament, and therefore you are in a state of sin, and in that sense your marriage in void, according to your conscience, though not according to the law.’ ”(94)
A movement of retrogression the promulgation of the decree may have been; but every religious body must be free to lay down rules as to its membership. To quote the letter of the Archbishop of Canterbury of November 8th, 1911, on this subject: “Any branch of the Church of Christ must clearly have the power of defining the conditions of membership.”(95) It is but fair to remember that the decree _Ne temere_ is part of a settled policy. The Church of Rome has often shown its disapproval of mixed marriages which Benedict XIV. declared “abominable.”(96) It is but fair also to take note of the plea that this decree is the latest attempt to secure uniformity in regard to marriage law; attempts which have been pursued since the _Tametsi_ decrees of the Council of Trent. Before the reform in the marriage law then effected there was much confusion and looseness. All that was required for a valid marriage was that the contracting parties should express to each other their mutual consent by words _de præsenti_; a state of things which favoured fraud and led to uncertainty. The Tridentine change must appear to most lawyers to have been a great reform; marriage was to be solemnised in the presence of the parish priest of one of the parties and of two witnesses. But this ecclesiastical law is not even now in force in several countries. It was promulgated in most Catholic countries; it was never promulgated in purely Protestant countries, or in all countries with a mixed population. It applied to marriages between two Catholics but not necessarily to mixed or to Protestant marriages. It might be in force in one part of a country and not in another. Thus the _Tametsi_ decree was in force in the greater part of the province of Armagh since the time of Elizabeth. Not until 1827 was it promulgated in the province of Dublin. Now we are told that it was to secure still further uniformity that the decree _Ne temere_ was published. It requires all persons baptized in the Catholic Church, and those who have been converted to it from heresy or schism, to marry in the presence of the parish priest or ordinary of the place in which the marriage is to be celebrated, otherwise the Church will regard it as null. If neither of the contracting parties is a Catholic the Church recognises the marriage as valid wherever it is celebrated.(97) How far other motives may have operated I cannot say; it is only fair to bear in mind that the decree is defended as a fresh effort to introduce certainty and definiteness as to a fundamental institution.