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Mexican politicians to establish a Mexican national church and a scission from due church government under the Roman Catholic Church could be acquiesced in without inevitably leading to separation from Rome and the establishment of a so-called Mexican National Catholic Church without any true or proper Catholic government thereof. This is necessarily in clear conflict with the basic doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and the deep belief of her members that she is ecumenical and universal in the very sense and scope of the belief that all peoples ought to worship one and the same God, and that their Church was founded by Christ, true God and true Man, for the governance of the spiritual life of all men living under the skies, irrespective of nationality and irrespective of origin, class or condition in life, even of servitude." 27

The Pastoral Letter asserts that the Church of Rome in its trouble in Mexico turns to prayer and not to arms; nevertheless, it reasserts its supreme claims in Divine right which are at the root of the great conflict between it and Mexico, for it declares the conflict in Mexico to be:

27 New York Times, December 5, 1926, p. 6, col. 3. It is claimed in the opinion that the United States Supreme Court in the case of the City of Ponce vs. the Roman Catholic Church (210 U. S. 296) decided in favor of the inherent rights of the Roman Church as superior to the State. An examination of the decision shows that the case involved the title of the Church to land in the City of Ponce in Porto Rico. The rights of the Church had been acquired under the fundamental law of Porto Rico, and had been guaranteed by the United States in and by the Treaty of Paris. In other words, the constitutional law of Porto Rico expressly recognized the rights and title of the Church to the land in question. In the Mexican situation the case is the reverse: the constitutional law of Mexico denies the right and title of the Roman Church. The case is, therefore, without authority in relation to the point it is cited to support.

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an attempt at nothing less than the destruction of the Divine Constitution of the (Roman) Church by reducing her to the status of a state-controlled schismatical body, without the right to form, train and educate her own clergy, to have a sufficient number of them for the care of souls, to find means for her support, to develop works in accord with her mission of charity and enlightenment, and to apply the teachings of the Gospel to the formation of a public conscience.'

99 28

In these words it will be observed that the claims of inherent juristic personality, of inherent right of propaganda and of property, are clearly asserted, and the area of Cardinal Gibbons' Twilight Zone is not reduced or its shadows in any wise relieved.

28 Pastoral Letter, p. 3.

CHAPTER XII

THE TWILIGHT ZONE OF MARRIAGE

WHATEVER may be the law of marriage, as taught by Christ, the modern State in its non-Christian development does not accept that law as obligatory, but enacts a marriage law of its own determined by the consensus of its citizens. The Christian churches claim that the marriage law as taught by Christ is obligatory upon them, but they differ in their interpretation of the law. Between the State and the churches the chief point of difference is over the indissolubility of marriage, and in respect to this some of the churches are recreant to the law of Christ and are as lax as the State.1

It is of common agreement that marriage is a matter of peculiar cognizance in law, both ecclesiastical and civil, that the contract is sui generis, and that there is a distinction between the contract and the status or

166 ... Theoretically at least the Roman Church has consistently adhered to Christ's teaching. But in practice the technicalities of dispensations, nullities and the like have frequently been used to justify exceptions. The Church of England is clearly sound in its doctrine and Canon Law. To-day that Church, because of its connection with the state, has very grave difficulty in maintaining the integrity of its matrimonial discipline in the face of recent divorce legislation. The American (Episcopal) Church, like the English, inherited the Western Canon Law, which forbids the remarriage of a divorcee while the other party lives. But in 1868 the General Convention enacted a canon in which it was provided that such prohibition 'shall not be held to apply to the innocent party in a divorce for the cause of adultery.'... Inevitably the lax ideas of American society at large infect the minds of many Churchmen." F. J. Hall, Dogmatic Theology, vol. ix, (The Sacraments), pp. 277-278.

bond in which the contract results. The contract is the consent or agreement of the parties evidenced by prescribed formalities, and followed by cohabitation, a physical feature, which is essential to the completion of the contract. The contract being thus executed, the status or bond is established.

Neither over the contract nor the status of marriage could there be any conflict of jurisdiction between State and Church, prior to the Reformation, for, as has been pointed out,2 they were then substantially one. Marriage was unanimously confided to the jurisIdiction of the Church. With the Reformation came the subdivision of the one State into many states and the one Church into many churches. There was no longer a Universal Church to which the State could concede jurisdiction over marriage. The only course open to the State was to assume jurisdiction itself sufficient to permit it to determine whether or not the status or bond of marriage existed. A large number of its people rejected the Christian theory of the indissolubility of marriage, and with it even its sanctity. Others held to the Christian theory and elevated marriage not only to sanctity but declared it to be, as between Christians, a sacrament. The State has established the minimum requirements of the marriage relation; the churches the maximum. The State so far has not imposed its minimum requirements to the exclusion of the churches' maximum requirements. Should it do so, the rights of Christians would seem adequately protected by their revolt in the exercise of freedom of conscience. The churches have been left free to administer church law, 2 Supra, p. 21-25.

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in respect to marriage, through the consciences of their members and through the conditions of church membership and discipline. To teach that marriage is a sacrament in addition to a contractual relation would harmonize with the law of the State, but the doctrine of the Church of Rome is that marriage between Christians becomes a sacrament, into which contract and status are merged, and over which the State can have no jurisdiction, although some of the civil incidents attaching by reason of State law may remain. Among baptized persons the State, in Roman Catholic doctrine, has no right either to declare valid a marriage that is null in the eyes of the (Roman) Church, or to pronounce null a marriage that is really valid." The concrete result of this is that the Church of Rome and the State each claim a sovereign right to determine when two baptized persons are man and wife. The State by divorce, under certain conditions, assumes the right to terminate a marriage admittedly valid by its law, and the Roman Church by annulment, under certain conditions, assumes the right to determine that no marriage whatever has taken place. The State breaks the marriage bond; the Roman Church declares that no marriage bond has existed. In each case the union is dissolved. In the theory of the State, the Roman Church has no original and inherent jurisdiction over marriage to the exclusion of the State. In the theory of the Roman Church the State has no jurisdiction whatever over the bond of marriage between baptized persons; that jurisdiction belonging exclusively to the Roman Church. The antagonism is obvious.

3 Manual of Christian Doctrine, p. 494. "The civil power has no

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