The Marlborough Case

...In view of the consolation he takes and has often expressed, in the more rigid doctrine of the older Church, it is to be regretted that the good Bishop did not evidence a little more faith...

...If the testimony were against the fact of moral coercion, the Catholic Church could only declare that the marriage was valid...

...This is sound law, whether civil or ecclesiastical, because it is sound sense...

...In the very early history of his own communion, Bishop Manning may find conclusive evidence of how impervious to expediency Rome can show itself when not satisfied by the evidence that even a king could procure and present...

...When an appeal is made to the Church to pass upon the validity or invalidity of a marriage contract, in view of the status of some Catholic whose rights in one way or another are affected by the validity or invalidity of the contract in question, it is clearly the province of the Church to adjudicate the matter...

...All that Rome does is to so deNovember 24, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 65 clare...

...What happens, though it only becomes public property when such attendant circumstances as exist in the present case make it matter of public interest, is that Rome, upon evidence which her courts judge conclusive, at times declares that what was presumed a marriage is null—in other words, that there has been, in a particular case, no marriage at all...

...All the elements of "big news"—extreme rarity, social position of the parties concerned, and food for discussion—have been present in the Marlborough-Vanderbilt case, and it is not surprising that the story has kept the front page for days in our metropolitan dailies...

...As often happens, comment—and comment from a very high quarter, did not wait upon all the facts, and in the light of details that have gradually found their way into print from correspondents at Rome and in London, the Episcopal Bishop of New York must feel by now that his preemption of the major moral shock was over-hasty...

...If there was a marriage—i.e., all the elements present that constitute a marriage— the contract stands^ indefectible...

...64 THE COMMONWEAL November 24, 1926 THE MARYBOROUGH CASE CHARLES DANA, the great editor of the New York Sun, is reported to have found no better illustration of news value than that, if a dog bit a man it did not matter, whereas, if a man bit a dog, it was front-page stuff...

...What God has joined together, let no man put assun-der, is the adamantine basis of the Catholic Church's marriage law...

...She has been adjudicating such matters for over two thousand years, and assuredly knows her own business better than people undeniably of good will but very partially instructed in her practices and her principles...

...Jacques Balsan has asked the Catholic Church to declare her marriage to the Duke of Marlborough null, on the ground that she was morally coerced into the contract, and was therefore not free...

...As far as the facts have been reported in the Marlborough-Vanderbilt case, Mme...

...The essence of the question is simply, "was there a marriage or not...

...Catholics regard Bishop Manning, and Bishop Manning's views on marriage as a sacrament, with too much sympathy and approval, to try to read into his words any real insinuation that the ecclesiastical courts at Rome use two balances in matters of conjugal discipline...

...Consequently, there was no valid or real marriage...

...The dogma that Rome never grants a divorce from a valid and consummated marriage remains, in fact, undisturbed by this latest exercise of her mandate...

...He is notoriously a strenuous opponent of divorce, although his own communion is a much divided body upon that question, and appears to benefit in individual cases by a compromise that Catholics have never been able to understand clearly...

...if there was no marriage—i.e., some element present that vitiated it— there never has been a true marriage...