RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Marriage
lawfully subject to its statutes. Under certain circumstances a temporary exception was made from the strict execution of these principles by express papal favor or " dissimulation." The abjuration of Protestantism was the point least insisted upon, but special stress was laid on the assurance that the children should be educated in the Roman Catholic faith. On principle the Roman Catholic Church always endeavors to prevent mixed marriages altogether, and then at least to render them difficult; but in any case where it assists in their contraction, it expresses its disapproval of the desecration of the sacrament of marriage which it sees in every mixed union. Absolute prevention, however, even from the point of view of its own law, is possible only where the Tridentine Decree on the contraction of marriage has either been promulgated or is practised without formal promulgation. On the other hand, where the pre-Tridentine canon law is authoritative in this respect, a ratum matrimonium may also be brought about by informal consent, even though the Church should refuse to cooperate. Difficulties may always be raised by the special conditions made in case a dispensation, either compulsory or voluntary, is asked. Disapproval may be expressed by refusing the banns and by withdrawing active assistance in declaring the consent of the parties to the marriage, the cooperation of the Church thus being restricted to the so-called passive assistance outside the Church and without priestly vestments, or at least by refusal to celebrate the nuptial mass with its benediction, or by omitting the simple benediction connected with the marriage ceremony. Where more or less sweeping exceptions to these principles are made, they are due to a desire to avoid greater evils to the Church. Toward the end of the eighteenth century mixed marriages were very mildly treated by the Roman Catholic Church; but in the nineteenth century she revived the full severity of her strict principles, the modifications conceded by Pius VIII. for the archdiocese of Cologne (1830) and for Bavaria (1832), or by Gregory XVI. for Austria (1841) being merely temporary.
According to the present legal status, the pope, or the bishop as his delegate, removes the impedimentum mixta religionis. The Roman Catholic ceremony is required, except in countries to which the declaration of Benedict XIV. (Nov. 4, 1741) for Holland and Belgium has been ex- 2. Present tended. The priest gives merely as- Roman sistentia passiva. The grant of dis- Catholic pensation presupposes the fulfilment Usage. 0f certain conditions. The Roman Catholic party promises to attempt the conversion of the Protestant, while the latter is pledged to make no such effort; both are bound to bring up all their children in the Roman Catholic faith and are required to waive an Evangelical marriage ceremony. By a decree of the Inquisition (June 17, 1864), the Roman Catholic ceremony in addition to the Protestant is inadmissible. If the Roman Catholic ceremony is desired after the Protestant, the priest is to perform it, but must impose some penance on the Roman Catholic party. Should the priest hear that the parties intend also to have
the Evangelical ceremony, he is to dissuade them, although emphasis is not to be laid so much on this point as upon the other conditions, especially the one referring to the education of the children. In the constitution " Provide " of January 18, 1906, Pope Pius X. decreed for Germany that mixed marriages of Catholics with non-Catholics not consummated according to the Tridentine Decree are subject to penalty, but valid, also that marriages of non-Catholics among each other in Germany are not subject to the Tridentine Decree for their validity. The State has repeatedly objected to the Roman Catholic regulation of mixed marriages; but through the introduction of the obligatory civil marriage the question has lost its acute character so far as the State is concerned, and has become primarily a controversy of the different confessions. The contraction of a mixed marriage after the divorce of the Protestant party would necessarily be considered absolutely unlawful by the Roman Catholic Church, even did she not consider Protestants bound by her laws, since according to her dogma the marriage union existing between two who have been baptized can not be dissolved by a judicial separation. Even did she concede the legal right of divorced Protestants to contract a new marriage, she could never allow her members to contract a marriage with those who, according to Roman Catholic belief, are still bound together by a former marriage. Only in case the divorce is found by a Roman Catholic ecclesiastical court to have affected a marriage which was null and void, can the Roman Catholic Church allow such a mixed marriage.
In the Protestant Church mere difference of religious Christian confession, at least in Germany, has never been regarded as an actual 3. Luther- impediment to marriage requiring a an Usage, formal dispensation, although in Saxony, as late as the seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries, a marriage between Lutherans and Roman Catholics needed a special license of the higher consistory, which was granted only on certain conditions, especially that of bringing up all the children in the Lutheran faith. For many years, however, the church ceremony has been generally allowed for mixed marriages, except where the Protestant party has agreed to bring up all the children in the Roman Catholic faith.
Legal statutes limiting the liberty of parents to decide as to the religious education of children born of a mixed marriage can be enacted only by the State, since those made by ecclesiastical authority can be binding only on the party to the marriage subject to such authority. E. Sbhling.
Bibliography: On primitive marriage consult: E. Westermarck, Hist, of Human Marriage, new ed., London, 1901, Fr. transl., Origine du manage dans Vespece humaine, Paris, 1895; L. Dargum, Mutterrecht und Raubehe und ihre Reste, Breslau, 1883; A. Girard-Teulon, Les Origines du mariage, Geneva, 1884; J. F. McClellan, Studies in Ancient Hist., 2 series, London, 1886-96; idem, The Origin of Exogamy, in English Historical Review, Jan., 1888 (both the last are of high importance); C. Letourneau, The Evolution of Marriage and the Family, New York, 1891; L. Tillier, Le Mariage, sa genese, son evolution, Paris, 1898; E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose; a Study of primitive Marriage, London, 1901; Smith, Kinship; L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, reissue, New York, 1907; N. W Thomas, Kinship Organizations and Group Marriage in Australia,
Marriage Marsh