Catholics and Divorce by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 17, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 45.

Catholics and Divorce.

By Editor

We clip the following from the Independent: "The other day a Congressman's divorced wife was married at Sioux Falls, S. D., the Catholic Bishop Marty officiating. It has been generally supposed that the Catholic Church is very stringent about forbidding the remarriage of divorced people, and when the bishop was written to asking for an explanation, he replied very briefly:"

'REVEREND DEAR SIR: Mrs. Dunham was not baptized.'

That is, because she was not baptized, her first union was null and void. An unbaptized person cannot receive a sacrament like marriage. She stood in the position of a woman who had lived with a man without marriage and therefore was free to marry. If that is Catholic doctrine, it is none the less outrageous."