Your ShelfYour Projects

Note and Comment

25%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Sep 15, 1904

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 81, No. 37.

Read the full edition

Note and Comment

By Editor

A GLANCE at our Current Mention column this week will give some idea of the fact that the judgments of God—wrecks, fires, tidal waves, etc.— are in the land, fulfilling the specifications of the sure word of prophecy. And the list we have given is, for lack of space, a very incomplete one.
CATHOLICS at Rome and in Great Britain are congratulating themselves on a recent act of homage to the papacy from the British government. For the first time since the loss of the pope’s temporal power in 1870, the papal flag has been saluted by a British man-of-war. The occurrence took place at the reopening of Armagh Cathedral, in Ireland, July 24. The pope was represented on the occasion by Cardinal Vannutelli, who, in making his report to the pope, said that he was accorded an enthusiastic reception, and that many honors were paid him. “The papal flag was hoisted on the steamer carrying the cardinal, and was saluted by British war-ships; while Lord Dudley, the lord lieutenant of Ireland, treated him as a prince of the blood.” The incident shows the Romeward trend of political sentiment in the leading Protestant nation of the Old World.
THE Catholic Church has much to say at this time about the divorce evil, and is calling for legislation which will greatly restrict, if not wholly curtail, the easy separations procured by married couples under the existing laws in the various States. The great frequency of divorce is truly one of the alarming evils of the times, or the evidence of such an evil, which seemingly the Catholic Church is working to correct. But it is to be remembered that from the Catholic point of view a Protestant marriage is not a valid marriage at all, and therefore that people living together in such a union are really living in adultery. A separation between such a couple would, from the Catholic point of view, be better than a continued union. The Catholic Church does not grant divorces, and the evil which she seemingly seeks to remedy lies wholly among Protestants, who, as stated, are in the Catholic view incapable of contracting a valid marriage. It is evident then that the Catholic Church has in view not the removing of a great evil by the legislation called for, but her own exaltation through the incorporation of her ideals into the law of the land.