Hardly in Harmony

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 26, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 46.

Hardly in Harmony

It has been stated that "Harper's Weekly" was a Catholic paper, or in sympathy with the Catholics, or that the editor himself was a Catholic; but the following from the issue of August 10, in an editorial entitled "The Pope and the Marriers," hardly indicates it. Referring to the decree called "Ne Temere," which provides that in the estimation of the Roman Catholic Church a marriage between two Roman Catholics, or a Roman Catholic and a Protestant, without the sanction of the Catholic priest, is null, the editor says:

"If this papal decree about mixed marriages was worth attacking by legislation, the way to go about it would be, we suppose, to provide that no marriage by a Roman Catholic priest should be valid at law. How would that do? The pope announces that certain marriages, accepted as valid, say, by the state of New York, shall be null to all members of the Roman Catholic Church. Would it be more than a measure of gentle protest if the state of New York should announce that certain marriages accepted as valid by the pope should be held to be null by the courts of New York? That would seem to be no more than turn about, and something like it has been done in France. But here it would not pay. It would make the pope and his decrees of too much consequence in the state of New York. The state at present does not know the pope, and they are best off unacquainted."

The latter part of which is a very just observation indeed.