International attention was arrested a few years ago by the marriage of a Seattle girl to the Maharajah of Indore and the previous conversion of the American bride to Hinduism. Skeptical newspaper-writers hinted that a $300,000,000 Oriental estate was not an incidental attraction. Whatever the actual motives were, the wedding ceremony cost no less than $250,000. In preparation a fruit diet was prescribed for the bride in order to "purify the vibrations of her impure nature, caused by her having eaten cow's flesh." On the wedding-day she was subjected to a ceremonial bath, when "holy water" of the Ganges was poured upon her head to the chanting of Vedic hymns and prayers. After this the American bride partook of a ceremonial dish, pancha amrita, a concoction of milk, curds, honey, liquefied butter, and sugar, sprinkled with sacred kusaj grass. In the next step of the ritual she prepared small balls of rice cooked in cow's milk as an offering to the sacred fire. After extended ceremonies she received a Hindu name, which she had to write with a diamond ring in rice and grain spread over a golden plate. Finally the officiating priest drew a red kumkuma mark on her forehead as a sign of conversion to Hinduism. The marriage ceremony itself began with the invocation of Ganesa, the elephant-headed god, continued with the chanting of Sanskrit verses, the throwing of saffron-colored rice on the heads of the couple, and concluded with placing ceremonial beads on the wife's neck.
Such interracial alliances stand condemned before the forum of all clear-thinking people. Yet the Racial Relationships Commission maintained by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America has on occasion gone out of its way to encourage such interracial marriages. This may be seen from statements in Information Service (published by the Department of Research and Education of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America) of November 13, 1926. Referring to the widely heralded Olivet Conference, devoted "largely to the relation of Negroes and whites," the bulletin asserted: "Dr. George Haynes of the Federal Council presented the problem and illuminated with his very extensive , knowledge every discussion of the week.... Nor was the question of intermarriage evaded. That was considered at length. It was felt that some pioneer spirits should take advanced steps in that direction.... After the discussion on intermarriage the group concluded that, if the individuals concerned fully realize the difficulties involved, mixed marriages may be socially highly desirable."
In the furtherance of its own program. Communism has ardently encouraged interracial marriages; and this enthusiasm has tinged the preaching and practice at some of our radical youth gatherings. For instance, an eye-and-ear witness at the American Youth Congress at Detroit furnishes this picture of the social mixing of the black and white races: "I cannot refrain from saying, simply and positively, that the most shocking thing I saw in connection with the Detroit Youth Congress was the social mixing of boys and girls of the black and white races.... While Clarence Hathaway expounded the doctrine of Communism, not three seats removed from me a white girl clung to the arm of, and openly petted with, one of the blackest sons of Africa I have ever seen. This was not an isolated circumstance."
University lecturers, with a flare for this new enlightenment, have based their advocacy of Negro and Caucasian intermarriages on the theory that the strains of negroid blood will strengthen the white race. But these social revolutionists will never be able to remove the insurmountable difficulties that are created by interracial alliances. What of the children? What of the social restrictions? We heartily agree with the deliberate verdict of Dr. Charles Eliot, former president of Harvard: "Intermarriage between members of races that are not kindred is generally condemned by medical, sanitary, and eugenic authorities; so that the right policy in nations which include many different races is not fusion or blending or amalgamation but a separate, parallel development of each race, acting in concord with the other races, but each preserving through many generations its own bodily and mental characteristics."
With increasing frequency in our present day helter skelter young people are thrown together with those who have no church connection and apparently no desire for it. Too often a romance develops, with no serious thought for the question of spiritual like mindedness. Youth sanguinely insists: "We love each other, and love conquers everything." A marriage is solemnized; and the Christian partner is content with hoping that the unchurched mate may be brought into the Church as the years speed on. Often an unbelieving husband has been brought to Jesus Christ through the intercession and example of a Christian wife. Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, whose liberal attitudes toward politics and religion were traceable to his home environment, was drawn at least temporarily closer to the Church through the influence of his wife, Johanna von Puttkamer, a young woman with "a serious and pious mind." In thousands of similar instances the promise of 1 Pet. 3:1,2 has been fulfilled: "Ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, that, if any obey not the Word, they also may without the Word be won by the conversation of the wives while they behold your chaste conversation, coupled with fear."
More often the consequences are distressing for both husband and wife. After an interesting romance, Mark Twain proposed marriage to Olivia L. Langdon, a Christian young woman, reared in a Christian home by the love of Christian parents. The standard biographies relate little of her reaction to Mark Twain's antagonism to Christianity. It seems that her Christian ideals at first had a profound influence upon the great humorist; for in February, 1870, just before their marriage, Mark Twain wrote a deeply spiritual letter to Olivia, closing with these words: "Turn to the Cross, Olivia, turn to the Cross! I turn with you. The peace of God will rest upon us, and all will be well." So she accepted him, perhaps, as many young women in the Church today, secretly cherishing the hope that her husband might be brought close to the faith by her words, her prayers, her example. At first these hopes seemed close to fulfillment. Albert Bigelow Paine in his biography of Mark Twain records: "His natural kindness of heart, and especially his love for his wife, inclined him toward the teachings and customs of her Christian faith.... It took very little persuasion on his wife's part to establish family prayers in their home, grace before meals, and the morning reading of a Bible chapter." One of Clemens's cronies who visited the household of the newly-weds could hardly stifle his surprise when he heard the humorist, skeptic that he knew him to be, ask a blessing and join in family worship.
That was in the ecstasy of their early married life. Just how seriously Mark Twain accepted these religious exercises will perhaps never be known. But soon he began to express distaste. One day, as Paine recalls, he burst out in protest: "Livy, you may keep this up if you want to, but I must ask you to excuse me from it. It is making me a hypocrite. I don't believe in the Bible; it contradicts my reason. I can't sit here and listen to it, letting you believe that I regard it, as you do, in the light of the Gospel, the Word of God."
The dreams of a happy unity in Christ which Olivia Langdon may have cherished were shattered. But the tragedy sped to a more grievous catastrophe. Mark Twain's unbelief ultimately exerted a deadening influence upon her own faith. As the years rolled by and she was daily exposed to her husband's skepticism (which apparently grew with his success), she began to feel the foundation of her faith waver. Close contact with the coterie of like-minded scoffers in this country and abroad soon began to break her spiritual resistance. Paine summarizes the results of his relentless attack on her faith: "She had lost something, too; she had outstripped her traditions. One day when she and her sister had walked across the fields and had stopped to rest in a little grove by a pretty pond, she confessed, timidly enough and not without sorrow, how she had drifted away from her orthodox views. She had ceased to believe, she said, in the orthodox Bible God who exercised a personal supervision over every human soul. The hordes of people she had seen in many lands, the philosophies she had listened to from her husband and those wise ones about him, the life away from the restricted round of home, all had contributed to this change."
Years later, in the crushing sorrow of heavy bereavement, Mark Twain sought to strengthen his wife with the words: "Livy, if it comforts you to lean on the Christian faith, do so." But her answer was the response of lost hope. She replied: "I can't, Youth" (her favorite designation for her husband); "I haven't any."
We cannot estimate the sacrifice of happiness in that house which is divided against itself through irreligion. There can be no permanent harmony and complete understanding where an unchurched partner by active or passive opposition continually resists Christian faith and where the specter of separation in eternity looms up in all its ghastliness. In the day of trouble there is need for the complete dedication to the one Lord who "doeth all things well" and for the mutual strengthening of spiritual encouragement. To be joined in marriage with an unbeliever is an acid test of one's Christianity; and that this test is usually too strong is shown by the fact that the believing husband or wife is frequently estranged from the Church, imperceptibly at first, but openly at last. Thrift, good taste, pleasing personality, physical attractiveness, sense of humor, sympathy, neatness, patience, success, and the long catalog of other demands upon which young people frequently insist are all secondary when compared with the fundamental fact that without Christ, acknowledged by both husband and wife, there can be little definite assurance of lasting happiness. When marriage has only a physical foundation; when it is based merely on mental similarity and attraction; when it entirely ignores spiritual compatibility, it overlooks the one divine element which makes for family unification. How much more hopeful the marriage dominated by a common faith, communion of worship, and spiritual cooperation, through which joy and sorrow alike can be shared together! What an inestimably more reassuring promise of mutual understanding in the pledge (Ruth 1:16) "Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God"!
The question which continually suggests itself in the discussion of mixed marriages crystallizes into a hypothetical case contained in a letter from a perplexed young woman: "Suppose there were a Christian girl who had met a man whom she believed to be the 'only man in the world' for her, even though he was without church affiliation. The obvious solution of course would be to persuade the husband to become a member of her Church. But suppose he refused to be interested in religion. Would you then say that it were better for this young woman not to marry at all than to marry some one with no more spiritual qualification than that?"
This issue confronts a larger number of our young people than we may believe, and in answering, I do not hesitate to state that a Christian girl should not marry a man who has no interest in religion or who is connected, with organizations opposed to the Church. There are always exceptional cases in which an unbelieving or disinterested husband has been brought to Christ through the intercession of a Christian wife. Such isolated instances do not disprove the general truth that for the sacred union of marriage a Christian should be wedded to a sincere follower of Jesus. Young men or women in danger of giving their hearts to those in whose life Christ plays no part should stop, look, and listen to the Word of God, to the shipwrecks on the matrimonial sea, to the claims of unborn children, before they enter into a marriage in which there is no common ground for prayer and no common hope for a reunion in the life beyond the grave. Such a marriage of course is legally and civilly unobjectionable; but it certainly does not conform to Biblical ideals. It would be better by far for young people confronted by this dilemma to ask God for strength to tear this love from their hearts.
Even worldly wisdom protests against marriages between church-members and unbelievers. A young man who assumes the pen-name "Hannibal" writes to the question box of the Chicago Tribune' and receives this pointed answer from the professional counselor of that paper:
"Hannibal tells me he has no 'religious hallucinations,' does not go to church, has no creed, does not believe in God, heaven, hell, or the Bible. He is not, however prejudiced against any religion or belief, and he does not try to convert any one to his way of thinking.
" 'So much for that,' says he. 'Don't write me a thesis on religion, for I know more about it than you do; but please write an answer to my problem, regarding which you know more than I do.'
"Hannibal's problem is this: He is engaged to a beautiful girl whose folks have just learned he considers religion as bunk, and now, he says, they would just about as soon see their daughter married to a 'cross-eyed, hump-backed, tongue-tied half-breed Turkish Eskimo' as to Hannibal.
" 'Because they have some kind of faith, regarding which they cannot even talk intelligently and, like all churchgoers, know nothing about it at all,' says Hannibal, 'they have the nerve to tell me I can't marry their girl because I have no church and could talk them black and blue in the face with pertinent things to show I know what I am talking about.
" 'Now, what I want to know is this: Should a blind faith in their religion make me so far below them that I am unworthy of their daughter? I will let my wife go to any church or all of the churches she wants to; and if she needs religion, I'll see that she gets it. Do you really and truly believe her parents have justification in their attitude?'
"Yes, Hannibal, I think they have justification in their attitude. Quite so. If she were my daughter, I'd as soon see her married to the cross-eyed, tongue-tied half-breed, for the simple reason that a girl with religion married to a man without would find the same compatibility she would with one who couldn't talk to her in her own language or understand her motives. For all your so-considered liberality of thought about letting the other fellow have his religion, you haven't got it. You couldn't have it and feel the way you do about it. You call it bunk; so you couldn't be tolerant about it. Human nature is not built upon lines like that. You could not feel as violently as you do upon the subject of religion without making the girl unhappy should she marry you. You are as intolerant of her parents' belief as they are of your lack of it.
"Without wishing to start any religious argument, I cannot see how your marriage into that family would bring anything but unhappiness to the girl. Persons with religion and persons without can no more mix than water and oil.
"A man without religion is his own master. The personal self obtrudes too much on consciousness to make another happy for any length of time, let alone make oneself happy. How can it be otherwise with no one but yourself to answer to?"
Of more importance, because of its increasing frequency, is the marriage of Christians and Jews. The Mosaic law legislates against intermarriage, mentioning specifically seven prohibited Canaanite groups and declaring: "Thou shalt not make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, and his daughter shalt thou not take unto thy son" (Deut. 7:3). Throughout the Old Testament there has been an emphasized antipathy to this commingling of Jewish and Gentile blood. Solomon is severely criticized for his notorious marriages with heathen princesses. When Nehemiah returned from Susa and surveyed the lamentable remains of ruined Jerusalem, one of his first efforts .was to preserve the survivors from contamination through intermarriage with the Gentiles. When Ezra came to the royal city, he found a composite citizenry that spoke a patois, promiscuously entering into mixed marriage after the example of the priests and ^ princes. The unspeakable horror which this provoked is expressed in his words: "When I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle and plucked off the hair of my head and sat down astonished" (Ezra 9:3). With untempered rigor did these two leaders demand that the men separate from their heathen wives. In accord with this vigorous protest, injunctions against matrimonial alliances with Gentiles were codified in the Talmud as established Jewish law. (Cf. M. Mielziner, The Jewish Law of Marriage and Divorce, p. 45.)
Today, too, orthodox Jews feel an almost instinctive revulsion against every form of intermarriage. In homes where the rigor of old traditions still survives a Jewish son who marries a Christian woman commits the all but unpardonable offense. His family sits in mourning and regards him as dead. He is ostracized by his relatives and friends. Sir Adolph Tuck, chairman of Raphael Tuck, Ltd., the well-known British greeting card firm, left a $1,600,000 estate acquired largely through the sate of Christmas-cards. In orthodox protest the testator stipulated that any of his children who married a Christian should be disinherited.
In his illuminating tract Judaism and Marriage, Felix A. Levy, Ph. D., Rabbi at Emanuel Congregation in Chicago, states the conservative attitude toward intermarriage (p. II): "Mixed marriages, or unions between Jews and non-Jews, are discouraged by Judaism, the chief reasons being that differing religious views in the household are not conducive to peace and harmony, love and understanding, that an intimate relation such as marriage must foster. It has been the experience of the Jewish people that, when partners are of different faiths, the home will not be conducted Jewishly, and, in addition to other disadvantages, the children will not be reared as Jews. Judaism is the religion of a small minority, which can ill afford to weaken itself by loss of any of its members. Religions, like nations, have a natural anxiety to guard their hearths against loss by defection or desertion. If, however, the stranger embraces Judaism whole-heartedly and willingly joins the Jewish people, he or she is made welcome, and an intermarriage may take place."
With the insistent growth of liberal Judaism the stigma on intermarriage lost much of its rankling bitterness. Even in earlier and stricter days, despite the decree of Constantius (339 A. D.) forbidding the marriage of a Christian to a Jewess under penalty of death (a measure which was repeated by the third and fourth Lateran Councils as well as by subsequent church-bodies), marriages between Christians and Jews were not unusual, as Graetz demonstrates. (History of the Jews, Vol. 3, p. 54.) During the Moslem dominion of Spain mixed marriages were frequent. In 1807 Napoleon summoned a Jewish convocation to the city of Paris, and among other issues which he submitted for solution was the question whether Jews were to be permitted to intermarry with Christians. The finding of this body was: "The great Sanhedrin declares that marriage between Israelites and Christians contracted according to the laws of the 'Code Civil' are from a civil standpoint binding and valid; and although such marriages cannot be invested with the religious forms, they shall not entail any disciplinary punishment (anathema)." More recently there are notable instances of such Jewish-Christian alliances. August Belmont, American financier, married a daughter of Commander Perry. Ossip Gabrilowitch, concert pianist, married Mark Twain's daughter. Walter Damrosch, known to every American music-lover, married the daughter of James G. Blaine. Sir Arthur Sullivan, composer, was the son of a Christian-Jewish marriage; also Bret Harte, famous author; Sir John Herschel, astronomer; Francis Turner Palgrave, critic; Sir John Millais, artist; Leon Gambetta, statesman; General William Booth.
These marriages are not restricted to distinguished or liberal minds. Thirty years ago Rabbi Harris Weinstock (Jesus the Jew, p. 137) wrote: "There are many who can recall the time, some decades ago, when an intermarriage between Jew and Christian was of the rarest occurrence.... But a few years ago, in discussing the question with one of our former Rabbis, the point arose as to what percentage of intermarriages existed in our midst. We estimated such marriages to be about 2 or 3 per cent of our Jewish community. On making out a careful list, imagine our surprise to find that they represented fully 10 per cent of our Jewish population." Since his time there has been no diminution in these Jew-Gentile unions, particularly in such cities as New York, where one eighth of all the Jews in the world find their domicile and where the telephone directory shows sixteen columns of Cohens and only fourteen of Smiths. Altogether, the attitude of the Jewish Church officials has not been kindly disposed toward mixed marriage, because they have realized, as Theilhaber (Der Untergang der deut-schen Juden, Berlin, 1921, p. 37) concedes: "Mixed marriages lead the exodus from Judaism."
Ordinarily mixed marriages with Jews, even if freedom of worship is conceded to the Christian partner, have no promise of lasting blessing. The intervening gulf of conflicting traditions, contradictory creeds, antagonistic philosophies of life, can be bridged only in isolated exceptions. Even then a party to this mixed relation moved by the sincerity of a deep Christian conviction can never know the peace and contentment arising from a common faith and the hope of reunion in heaven. Many Jews who enter these interracial marriages are religiously indifferent, and the all too frequent consequence is the submergence of spiritual conviction. Since "no man liveth to himself," least of all in marriage, the constant influence of harpooning relatives stimulates domestic discord.
This religious incompatibility is far more serious than the eugenic interest which Germany has displayed in its official frown upon Jew-and-Gentile intermarriage. The Nazis, who have fanatically set their face against any commingling of Semitic and Nordic blood, are not concerned about the cleft which antagonized religious interests must create but are impelled by a theory for pure-blooded race preservation. They make the mistake which has consistently characterized the modem pursuit of the social sciences — they minimize or neglect altogether the religious element. It can be positively shown that Jews who have been converted to Christianity may make very acceptable life partners for Christians. That was the experience of Jenny Lind. Her husband, Otto Goldschmidt, was born a Jew, but was baptized before marriage. Their home was happy.
I shall never be able to forget the penetrating happiness on the face of a woman who rushed up after the conclusion of a church service in Chicago to say that the most joy-filled day of her life had come; for, as she explained, she had been married to a Jewish gentleman for twelve years, and he had just told her that he had resolved to accept Christ and join the Church. After twelve years of married life she felt instinctively that the final and complete happiness had just come. And the letter written by the converted husband shortly after his baptism breathed the joy and understanding of a new grasp on life.
The question is frequently asked, "How about marriage outside one's own Church, a union in which, for example, the husband belongs to one Church and the wife to another?" This situation is quite different from that in which one of the contracting parties is an unbeliever, or non-Christian; yet even these interdenominational marriages are far from ideal. A marriage outside one's own Church frequently entails insurmountable difficulties. Sometimes arrangements are made so that the husband attends his church and the wife hers, — a pathetic departure from the ideals of family unity and common worship! Or on one Sunday both attend the wife's church, and on the following Sunday both attend the husband's.
Serious objections are involved in either case, for this arrangement seldom functions satisfactorily and generally produces marked indifference on the part of both husband and wife. After the children come, more acute problems develop. We know marriages of this kind in which harmony and contentment seem to prevail, but they are not frequent. Below the serenity of the surface there is often a resignation which bravely resolves to make the best of a disheartening situation.
Often conditions become so intolerable that a broken home is the consequence of a mixed marriage. In Youth Tell Their Story (p. 21) investigators on the American Counsel on Education report after personal interviews with more than 13,500 young people in Maryland that "the extent of divorce, separation, and desertion among parents of mixed affiliations is over twice as great as among parents whose [church] affiliations are not mixed."
From my extensive correspondence files covering mixed marriages the following is offered as typical of the many misunderstandings which may develop even in marriages between Protestants of different churches:
"When I married, I knew my husband did not belong to the Lutheran Church but to another Protestant group. I was led to believe that he could not change because of his mother's heart. So I married him, thinking that certainly one sermon in our church would convince him which was the true Church. I also thought that, if I gave a good example, he would see what the true doctrine works. Anyway, when the children came, he promised that I was to bring them up in our Church. Now, after much controversy and many unpleasant scenes, he insists that they shall be in programs in his church. Always the mother's heart was given as an excuse. I can't quarrel any more. Please don't think he's bad. He provides well for us and is kind otherwise, but when church matters come up, he is terrible. No one can talk to him. And I can't stand any more trouble. My prayer for twelve years has been to make him understand. Please tell me where I am wrong."
For ten years, from 1926 to 1936, H.A.Dittmar, teacher at Mount Calvary Lutheran School, St. Louis, Mo., carefully observed the church attendance of children who came from homes in which both parents are affiliated with the same church and homes in which one parent or no parent is a church member. He finds in the case of 508 children and in a total of more than 500 church services that the average attendance for children with two Lutheran parents is 77.12 per cent. In families with only one parent a Lutheran the average is 62.31 per cent, arid in homes where neither parent is a member of the Church the average drops to 56.8 per cent.
In the 1939 survey of 3,101 families, which, it is contended, shows the trend of modem marriages, the Board of American Missions in the United Lutheran Church found that in most cases of mixed marriages less than one third of the once Lutheran parties retained their connection with the Lutheran Church or joined another communion. The summary of these mixed marriages follows:
Lutheran-Methodist --—— Lutheran-Baptist ———— Lutheran-Presbyterian _ Lutheran-Episcopalian -— Lutheran-Congregational Lutheran-Evangelical ——. Lutheran-Sects _.„—-_.-—.-
In Active Membership with Lutheran Church
%
„ 24.7 .- 29.9 .- 30.7 .- 27.1
- 16.9
- 34.7
- 37.3
Not Now Affiliated with Any Church
75.3 71.1 69.3 72.9 83.1 65.3 62.7
Total Marriages
519 304 300 207
59
46 292
The fact that most divorces involving members of the Lutheran Church occurred in mixed marriages should be an unmistakable warning. In correspondence with several hundred pastors of our typical congregations throughout the country, expressions like the following have been received:
"There have been but three divorces in the seven years of my pastorate in Saginaw, Michigan, and all three were cases in which the wife was a member but the husband a non-member."
"In the twenty-five years of my pastorate I have had two divorces. Both were mixed marriages."
"I have had only two divorces in twenty-seven years among the families of my church in Long Beach, California. In both cases the husband was not a member of the Church."
"During my eight years in Salt Lake City I have had but one, case of divorce among my membership. The wife, who was granted the divorce, was my member, while the husband was not."
"Since my advent to Mobile ten years ago there have been six divorces. In all these cases, with one exception, either husband or wife was of another denomination."
"During the seven years of my pastorate in Kingston there has been but one divorce, and the husband was not a member of the Church."
"During my four years of service in New Orleans there have been but three divorces in our congregation. In two instances only one of the parties involved was a member of the Church."
"On an average in the past seven years we have had one divorce a year in this Fort Wayne congregation, and in all but two cases either the husband or the wife was not a member of our Church."
"During my pastorate of forty-one years in Chicago I performed 348 marriages. Of these, eleven couples have been divorced, but in only one of these eleven cases were both husband and wife members of our Church."
These interdenominational marriages are of course the most common of all mixed marriages. Because of their very frequency the counsel which the Church extends must be practical and definite. This advice cannot be clothed in the formal recommendations made by the Committee on Marriage and the Home for the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America. The opening resolution, approved by the Administrative Committee of the Council in March, 1932, declares: "Where the persons contemplating marriage are members of different communions nearly related in doctrine or polity, they may well be advised by their respective pastors to settle the question before marriage by agreeing to attend together one or the other of their churches, or even a third church, and to bring up their children in it." Since the attitude of the Federal Council of Churches in America is notoriously unionistic and classifies as "communions nearly related in doctrine or polity" (our italics) practically all the major Protestant denominations, this pronouncement says in effect that, if a Baptist young woman meets a Methodist young man and they decide to marry, the man should give up Methodism and become a Baptist, or the woman should renounce the Baptist Church and become a Methodist, or both should forsake their churches and become Presbyterians. It is a mystery that these concessions to spiritual indifference can be proclaimed in the name of Jesus Christ.
Our deliberate counsel to all the young people of our Church confronted by the prospect of interdenominational marriage is this: Remember that you have pledged yourself to your Church by a sacred oath and that you can tolerate no compromise with error in any form. You cannot permit even marriage to make you untrue to your Church and its divine truth. Consider very carefully all the factors involved in marriage with some one outside your Church. If in the face of the warnings of experience you still feel, after deliberate and prayerful thought, that you must marry a member of another Church, then maintain your religious life and devotion to your own Church even more faithfully than before and hope and pray and work for the conversion of your life's helpmate to your faith and the unity of hope and love which it inspires.
When a Protestant young man or woman contemplates marriage with a Roman Catholic, the complications become critical. The perplexities of this problem are well stated in a letter from a correspondent in Chicago: "I am a young woman twenty-six years old, a member of a Lutheran church. For nine years I have been working in the same office, where I met a young man of Catholic faith. We were friends for a long time and met socially, enjoying each other's company very much. Now for several years we have seen each other outside the office at least once a week. We get along splendidly, love each other very much, but as far as religion is concerned, we merely show respect for the other's, but do not, I hardly need tell you, agree on that score....
"We, of course, would like to get married, and I have to make the decision as far as my own action is concerned, which I find very difficult to do. The Catholic Church would excommunicate this young man and would not consider the marriage valid if he were married by any one else than a priest. If I consent to be married by a priest, I would not be excommunicated by the Lutheran Church and my marriage would be considered legal. I would, however, have to consent to have my children baptized and brought up in the Catholic faith. How can I consent to this? ...
"The future therefore is really our problem; because, if we were married, thinking only of the present, each one of us could worship according to his own faith. But when I think of bringing up my children in a different faith, I feel that I could not go through with that. Then, too, I appreciate that this young man would feel the same way about it. Yet in spite of all that we both feel that beneath all the outward manifestations we believe in the same God — so there we are again."
This young woman sees the situation more clearly than many others, and if she had directed her questions to a priest, the procedure might have followed the course outlined in an Atlantic Monthly (September, 1935) article, entitled "A Roman Courtship." This was a part of biographical reminiscences by Lord Howard of Penrith, better known in this country as Sir Esme Howard, British ambassador to the United States from 1924 to 1930. With considerable detail, and not without some doctrinal inaccuracies, Sir Esme recounts his courtship in Rome preceding his marriage to Isabella, granddaughter of Princess Bandini, a marriage which was directly responsible for his conversion to the Catholic Church.
In his preliminary remarks the former ambassador recalls the intimate scene of his proposal and relates that Isabella agreed to marry him provided he turn Catholic. Although he regards his conversion to that Church as a forlorn hope, he is finally won over to try the experiment. When he asks for some one to explain the doctrines of the Roman Church, his wife-to-be suggests one of the high papal authorities, Monsignor Merry del Val.
An interesting account of four weeks' ensuing religious discussions now follows in these magazine memoirs. We are taken to the top floor of the Vatican Palace, and as the conversations between the titled Englishman and the papal prince are summarized, we see that the various doctrines of Protestantism are labeled as "guess-work," that their creeds are indicted as local, not universal, that Roman bias labels the disloyal disciples who left the Savior at Capernaum as the first Protestants.
As the lessons proceed, the objections that Sir Esme raised against Catholicism are removed by scholastic logic and papal pronouncements. The Roman Church is exalted as having the only true faith. Purgatory is explained and justified, not from Scripture but from false, syllogistic reasoning; for the instructor teaches that as Christ's sufferings redound to the benefit of mankind, so human suffering, in imitation of Christ's, can be used to decrease the anguish of relatives and acquaintances in purgatory. The bland claims are raised without challenge that priests can impose whatever penance they please; that Peter as the first Pope is the rock upon which papal infallibility is based; that the Catholic doctrine of the Lord's Supper and the sacrifices of the Mass are divine and Scriptural. The month of instruction did not fail in its purpose. There came a day when, as Sir Esme sat under Tasso's oak, on an eminence overlooking the Holy City, he was mysteriously moved. Before long he attended Mass and was ready for conversion — and marriage.
Unfortunately this combination of Catholic propaganda and a springtime romance in Rome may prove interesting reading to those who are ignorant of the facts involved in conversions to Catholicism for the sake of marriage. Young people who read these reminiscences of the British diplomat may be tempted to regard the emphatic protest of the Church against marriage with Catholics as biased and antiquated; and while they may not be ready to give up the faith to which they are pledged with a sacred promise and embrace Catholicism, as Sir Esme Howard did, they may conclude that the Church has been all too serious in its denunciation of mixed marriages.
These young people will be surprised to note that the Catholic Church has definitely set its face against mixed marriages and declares: "Everywhere the Church most strictly forbids marriages between two baptized persons one of whom is Catholic and the other a member of a heretical or schismatic sect," »'. s., a non-Catholic. [New Code of Canon Law, Canon 1060.) The complexities of modem life and the resultant intermarriages have led the Roman Church to offer dispensations permitting marriage with non-Catholics, but only on the basis of "just and grave reasons." A Catholic writer (Adrian Lynch, C. P., in This Is Christian Marriage, p. 48) suggests the following as "just and grave" reasons: the expectation that the mixed marriage will be of great benefit to the Catholic Church, e.g., the union of a Protestant prince with a Catholic princess; the reasonable hope for the conversion of the non-Catholic; the avoidance of scandal; and the obviating of marriage before a Protestant minister or a justice of the peace. The Rev. Fulgence Meyer, O. F. M., adds this statement to show the real attitude of his Church: "Even when she [the Roman Catholic Church] grants the dispensation, her conduct with reference to the mixed marriage is one of reluctance and coercion." (Youth's Pathfinder, p. 242.) Where no approved motivation exists, the dispensation is not granted; and if a mixed marriage is consummated without dispensation, it is unlawful. (L. c., p. 49.)
In an increasingly rigorous policy of restriction, Roman Catholicism has laid down a number of conditions which are to be followed conscientiously by its priests and systematically given its laity after the dispensation for the mixed marriage is granted. The non-Catholic person in the marriage is obliged to sign the following promises in the presence of two witnesses: "I, the undersigned, not a member of the Catholic Church, wishing to contract marriage with N.N., a member of the Catholic Church, intend to do so with the understanding that the marriage tie cannot be dissolved except by death and promise him (her) on my Word of honor that he (she) shall enjoy the free exercise of his (her) Catholic religion and that all the children of either sex born of this marriage shall be baptized and educated in the faith and according to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. I further promise that no marriage ceremony other than that to be performed by the Catholic priest shall take place."
The Catholic party signs the following promise: "I, the undersigned, a member of the Catholic Church, wishing to contract marriage with N. N., do hereby promise that I will have all my children baptized and educated in the Catholic religion and that I will practice my religion faithfully and do all I can, especially by prayer, example, and the frequentation of the Sacraments, to bring about the conversion of my consort." (Our Sunday Visitor, April 29, 1934.) For years the Catholic Church has insisted upon this written agreement. But now Catholic authorities in some of the dioceses demand that the prenuptial promises be attested and notarized as civil contracts. A priest at the Gesu Church in Milwaukee explained the reason: "This contract is so formulated and so guarded that it can be enforced in the courts if necessary. In the past no such legal recognition was attached to the prenuptial agreement between parties to a mixed marriage."
The formal demand is made, first of all, that mixed marriages be solemnized by a Catholic priest. Where this first requisite is neglected or repudiated, the marriage is not regarded as a valid union by the provision of the Ne Temere decree (1908), and the Catholic member may be excommunicated. It is specifically excluded that either before or after the Catholic marriage ceremony there be any other religious rites performed by a Protestant minister. The language of the new Catholic code is definite and decisive: "Even though a dispensation has been obtained from the impediment of mixed religion, the consorts cannot, either before or after the marriage entered into before the Church, approach either personally or by proxy a non-Catholic minister acting in his religious capacity to give or to renew their matrimonial consent." (Canon 1063.) In effect the Roman Catholic attitude toward mixed marriages insists that all marriages solemnized by a non-Catholic officiant are, in the eyes of that Church, invalid and essentially equivalent to concubinage or common-law marriage.
Meyer states explicitly: "It may be worth mentioning in this connection that, if a Catholic is married before a civil magistrate or a Protestant minister, the marriage is null and void. As little as they can confer the sacraments of penance or extreme unction, for instance, so little can those personages by their presence ratify the reception of the sacrament of matrimony on the part of a Catholic. In fact, the Catholic who attempts marriage before a Protestant minister not only is not married, but also sins grievously against the holy faith in consequence of his or her recognition of non-Catholic worship. And the Catholic who is best man or, respectively, bridesmaid at a wedding the ceremony of which is performed by a Protestant minister commits a mortal sin against the faith for the same reason." (O. c., p. 322.)
The Rev. John A. O'Brien, Ph. D., chaplain of the Catholic students, University of Illinois, issues this pointed pronouncement in Our Sunday Visitor, April 29, 1934: "The Church finds herself obliged to require that the marriage be performed by a Catholic priest. To sanction the marriage of one of her children with a non-Catholic before a Protestant minister would mean that the Church was implicitly recognizing such a denomination, founded by a mere man, to be of equal validity with the Church established by Jesus Christ. This the Church could do only at the cost of her intellectual integrity. Then, the Catholic regards marriage as a sacrament, while most Protestant ministers do not. With no wish to hurt the feelings of our dear Protestant friends, the Church finds herself compelled, by the clear consciousness of her divine origin and of the mission divinely appointed under her, to give to error no more recognition than her divine Founder gave to it.
"To place the churches founded by Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, John Wesley, Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, and by Mrs. Aimee Semple McPherson Hutton on the same plane as the Church founded by Christ and to clothe them with the same authority would be for her to commit the sin of apostasy. That is why the Church forbids her children to attempt to contract matrimony before the minister of a heretical sect. Those unworthy members who deliberately and willfully violate that solemn law the Church punishes with excommunication. For they are guilty not only of grievous disobedience to the Church, but also of treason to the faith of Jesus Christ."
Both husband and wife must also pledge that all children issuing from the mixed marriage are to be baptized and educated in the Catholic faith only. Explaining the detailed requirements of this stipulation, Rev. William I. Lonergan, S. J., says in America (April 23, 1932): "As for the promises to educate the children Catholics, this implies not only that they will be baptized, be taught their prayers, be brought up to attend Mass, be prepared for confession, Communion, and confirmation, and, in general, learn the rudiments of religion, but that they will be so grounded in their faith and its practices that it may be anticipated that they will continue steadfast." In a new ruling issued by the Congregation of the Sacred Office in Vatican City on February 5, 1932, the Catholic Church tells the world it will regard as invalid the marriage of Catholics and non-Catholics unless this pledge of the Catholic education of the children is maintained. Under the interpretation of this provision the Roman Church will no longer accept the plea that the laws of any nation prevent the proper Catholic training. In case the Catholic husband or wife dies first, the Protestant spouse must promise to fulfill his or her pledge. If these promises are regarded as mere formalities and made with no sincere intention, the marriage is rejected as invalid.
This, incidentally, is a sensational reverse of the traditional Roman position. Heretofore marriage has derived its permanence in Catholic theology from its alleged sacramental character; but henceforth the Roman Church teaches that a marriage solemnized in the accepted Roman manner may be declared void after ten or fifteen years either because of insincerity or because of the failure to educate children acceptably after marriage. This position may lead to terrifying consequences. When a relationship between man and woman recognized and blessed as marriage may later be dissolved and stigmatized as invalid and the children branded as illegitimate, this procedure must be denounced as treacherous and destructive.
Because Roman Catholics sometimes deny the force and facts of these assertions, it may be well to quote this authoritative statement from the widely read Catholic organ Our Sunday Visitor, April 10, 1932:
"Question: If a Catholic wishes to marry a non-Catholic, what promises must the non-Catholic make? If the promise is broken, is the marriage a valid union?
"Answer: The non-Catholic must promise, in the presence of witnesses and the priest, that he will consider the marriage bond as indissoluble except by death, that he will not in any way interfere with the Catholic party in the free exercise of his or her religion, that all the children who are born to the union will be reared in the Catholic faith, and that there will be no ceremony save that before the priest.
"A valid marriage is always valid, and a broken promise cannot make it invalid. However, if the non-Catholic person were not sincere and never intended to keep his promises, he obtained the dispensation for the mixed marriage under false pretenses. In such a case the dispensation is not valid and the marriage therefore not d valid one." (Our italics.)
Furthermore, the duty is incumbent upon the Catholic party to work wisely and discreetly, yet with all possible means, to bring about the conversion of the Protestant party to the Catholic faith. In explaining the requirement of this pledge, Catholics are directed to offer their non-Catholic spouses literature on the Catholic religion, to invite them to attend Mass, and to encourage cordial relations between the non-Catholic and the priest. (Lynch, l. c., p. 50.) If the non-Catholic does not maintain the prenuptial pledge, the marriage may be declared invalid. If Catholic husbands or wives violate the Church's injunction, they are to be excommunicated immediately and denied all church rites and privileges. According to the stricter Roman requirements the dead body of a non-Catholic husband or wife may not be interred beside that of the Roman spouse in a consecrated Catholic cemetery, even though the marriage was performed in literal accordance with church rites. As a further hindrance Canon 1102 specifies that, when a priest solemnizes a mixed marriage, "all sacred rites are forbidden." Some of the ceremonies may be admitted in exceptional instances, but the reading of the Mass is definitely ruled out. Fulgence Meyer (l. c., p. 244) says: "She [the Roman Catholic Church] does not publish the banns or announce the [mixed] marriage in church. She seems to be ashamed of it. Officially and publicly she takes no notice of the marriage whatever, save that she tolerates the pastor or his delegate to be the merest witness to the cold ceremony and has him to make the proper entries in the official books of the church. She does not allow the marriage to be celebrated in the church. The ceremony usually takes place in the rectory. She permits no blessing of the ring or the couple and withholds from the bride that beautiful blessing which she speaks over the bride during the nuptial Mass. She says no prayers whatever for the conjugal happiness of the couple. She does not have the priest to wear sacred vestments, not even the surplice and stole. She uses no holy water and no candles. She does nothing that bespeaks joy, comfort, or hope; but her whole attitude betrays fear, suspicion, and distrust."
Even with these regulations, mixed marriages are not welcome in the Catholic Church. Dr. William Stang, an eminent Roman authority, in Spiritual Pepper and Salt (pp. 155—158), embodies the prevalent denunciation of marriage with Protestants: "But despite these conditions, signed and solemnly sworn to, whole generations are lost. Many an upright Protestant refuses to sign the above conditions, and I respect him for his refusal. Many more who sign them have no intention of obligating themselves by them. What troubles and afflictions follow such marriages God alone could tell. As fellow-citizens we must do all in our power to persuade .non-Catholics not to rush into misery by marrying a Catholic. 'But I have promised to marry him.' Break your promise [!], for you should not keep a promise to do wrong! Are there not many conversions resulting from mixed marriages? Yes, a few; but, oh, the loss on the other side! In the majority of mixed marriages the children are lost to the faith. If you are a Catholic, the fact that your Church condemns such marriages should be sufficient reason for you to avoid such an unhallowed union."
Emphatically does Our Sunday Visitor print this statement of the Catholic Information Society under large headlines: "A Warning for All Non-Catholics: Don't Marry a Catholic!" Below this pointed appeal the Catholic writer tells non-Catholics: "Don't ever permit yourselves, dear non-Catholic friends, to fall in love with a Catholic; for love is unreasoning and lures its victims into thinking that they are exceptions to all rules and experiences.... The Catholic Church does all in its power to discourage mixed marriages and permits them only with the greatest of reluctance."
All in all, the losses sustained by the Catholic Church in consequence of mixed marriages are startling. In a Lenten letter to his priests Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich, Nazi opponent, wrote: "In the year 1922 1,722 licenses were issued by the civil authorities in Munich for mixed marriages, only one third of which were performed by the Catholic priest. In fact, year after year in Germany there were more children lost to the Catholic faith through mixed marriages than there are children won through the mission work of all Roman Catholic missionaries in the heathen lands."
In Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1932, a remarkably accurate annual covering church conditions in Germany, we are told that for the year 1930 the vast majority of mixed marriages in Germany were the unions between evangelical Christians and Catholics and that, contrary to popular expectation, more than half of the children born of these unions were baptized Protestant. The complete table follows:
Of 67,258 children born of Protestant-and-Catholic mixed marriages 37,124, or 55.2 per cent, were baptized in Protestant churches.
Of 15,438 children born of Protestant-and-non-religious mixed marriages 11,215, or 72.6 per cent, were baptized in Protestant churches.
In this connection, attention may be called to the relative number of conversions to Protestantism and Catholicism, which are often closely connected with mixed marriages, frequently occasioned by them. In 1930 in all of Germany 16,302 Catholics became Protestants. During the same period 1,971 Protestants became Catholics; in other words, there are more than eight times as many conversions to Protestantism as to Catholicism.
Commenting on the losses sustained by the Roman Church, estimated annually at half a million, Dr. John A. O'Brien (Ecclesiastical Review, December, 1931) takes into serious account the leakage due to mixed marriages. The same feeling of uneasiness and disappointment over Catholic losses through mixed marriages in America is expressed by Fulgence Meyer (l. c., pp. 243, 245, 247): "So many of her [the Roman Catholic Church's] children have been lost to her and to God in this manner that she never tolerates a mixed marriage without fearing lest the Catholic subject may soon, in consequence of the marriage, become a prodigal spiritually and religiously. Her sad experience in the matter has made her justly suspicious and fearful.
"Just yesterday (June 10, 1927) I heard of a Protestant parish in one of our cities which is made up almost completely of defections from the Catholic faith, brought on directly or indirectly through mixed marriages. Can you blame the Church for stopping so heavy and disastrous a leak in the ark of salvation and thereby forestalling the spiritual death of many immortal souls?
"Experience bears me out in saying that nine out of ten mixed marriages are directly or indirectly disastrous for the Catholic party and the offspring of the marriage, and the disaster usually takes the shape of a serious weakening or the complete loss of the holy faith."
In order to provide spiritual guidance for Catholic women who are married to non-Catholic men, the Roman Church has created Monica, the mother of Augustine, a saint. Yet a Catholic writer explicitly warns: "If anything, St. Monica's experience tells every Catholic girl dallying with the danger of a mixed marriage:
'Beware!'" (Youth's Pathfinder, p. 303.)
While the Roman Catholic denunciation of mixed marriages may be intensified by the fact that this Church loses much more than it ever gains through intercreedal unions, no Protestant Church has found intermarriage a desirable factor in the building of the Kingdom. There are exceptional instances in which God moves in His mysterious ways to perpetuate harmony in these conflicting alliances. But no privileged group can confidently insist upon the blessings of this special dispensation when the aggregate of all experience shrieks its protest. With full knowledge of all that this warning implies it is written here and now that young people who choose a Catholic companion for life are toying with invisible dynamite, which may blast their happiness for all time, even for eternity.
Headstrong youth, misled by the glamour of a hasty romance, will be reluctant to accept this well-meant advice. The Church has no escape from the incessant obligation of warning its young people against the disillusioning alliances of Protestant and Catholic marriages. A Catholic young lady may be attractive, lovable, clean, and wholesome; but if she is true to her Church and sincere in the practice of her creed, an insurmountable barrier must interpose itself between her and her husband. When she is told,'not once, but a thousand times, that it is her sacred duty to work with all possible means for the conversion 'of her husband, her zeal in following the mandates of her Church will normally tend to create and widen a cleavage and to repel any self-respecting husband in whom even a spark of loyalty to his Church still glows.
Daniel Defoe should be known as the author not only of Robinson Crusoe but also of the novel called Religious Courtship, or Marriage on Christian Principles. The heroine is a Protestant young woman, who speaks to our generation in the words Defoe attributes to her after her Catholic husband's death:
"It is impossible; no kindness, no tenderness, no affection, can make it up; the condition can never be happy, God faithfully served, children rightly educated, the mind perfectly easy, or the duty of the relation faithfully performed where the opinions in religions differ.... We could not worship God together, either abroad or at home.... We could never converse with one another upon religious subjects; for we could not enter upon the least serious thing but it led us into contradiction and wild distracted notions, which were immediately forced to take the help of our affections ... that we might not break out into indecencies to one another.
"We have, by the help of abundance of good humor on his side and a great deal of love on both sides, avoided differences' and disputes upon that subject [religion]; but, alas! that is but a negative, and it can only be said we did not quarrel, which is a great deal to say, too; but what is this to a happy life? How was our family guided, our children educated, and how would they have been educated if he had lived? And how was God worshiped? He and his priest at their Mass in the oratory or chapel; I and my little unhappy babies in my chamber and closet, where I mourned over them continually (rather than prayed over them) to think that some time or other they should be snatched from me and brought up in popery. Nor would it have been much otherwise if he had been of any other irreconcilable opinion; for as I told you before, though I knew his opinion, I never asked it; for any opinion where there is not a harmony in worshiping and joining in public prayer to God and joint serving Him in our families is the same thing, only not in the same extreme."
Young people who disregard the Church's advice today often experience the same disillusionment. No small part of my correspondence is made up of letters dealing with the marriage of Lutherans and Catholics. I believe that I have received enough letters of warning from our young people who have married Catholics to fill a large book. Typical are the following excerpts:
"I am a Lutheran, thirty years old, married to a Roman Catholic. I realize that the marriage was a mistake. It might have been all right if there had been no child, but now that we have brought a girl into the world, we must find a solution. I went with my husband nearly eight years before my marriage, and in those years when religion in marriage was mentioned, he always said that he would turn, as his religion meant nothing to him. Of course, being young and in love, I believed him. Those eight years were happy ones, and his stubbornness did not show up. When the time for our marriage approached, he refused to be married in my church and insisted upon a Catholic ceremony. I declined to do this. My future husband then came to my home and before my parents promised that, if I would consent to be married before a priest and sign the papers, so that he could remain a Catholic, the children, if any, could be brought up in my faith. We were married in a quiet ceremony. Ten months passed. . I continued in my church and Sunday school and was very happy. Then my baby was born. I was nervous and not very well after her birth, and when the time came to have her-baptized, he broke his promise and had her baptized by the priest. I was too sick mentally and bodily to fight when I realized what was happening. When the child grew older, I took her to church each Sunday with me and continued teaching her prayers and the stories of Christ. My husband did not approve, of course, and sulked for days at a time all through these years. His mother and sisters, who live next door, have twice given the child' a rosary. The first time I just overlooked the gift and forgot it. The second time I asked them not to give her another. Of course, this greatly angered my husband, and since that time there has been nothing but constant quarreling each time Sunday comes around."
"I am very much in need of your help. I am a Lutheran and have been one all my life. I married a Catholic ten years ago. When we started going together, he promised to join my Church. He even started taking instructions before we were married. We were married by a Lutheran minister; but after we were married, he stopped going to instructions. He would never go to church with me. But we lived happily until a year ago. Then we had trouble, and he left me. We went back together, and now he wants me to be married by a priest. If I don't, he says, we are to be parted again. He has been going to his church again but cannot attend the sacraments without being married by a priest. He and the priest insist on all the children's being reared Catholics. We have no children yet."
"I am a member of the Lutheran Church here, but I married a Catholic girl. I have tried my hardest to change her religion and have her join my Church, but she repeatedly refused. I can't face the people in our Church because of my marriage; so I don't attend any more. We both love each other, but the religious question, I am afraid, will break up our marriage if something isn't done about it. The question of children will arise sooner or later, and I wish you would inform me what to do about this. We promised each other that the children were to be neutral and choose their own religion, but it isn't fair to them."
"Two years ago I was married to a lovely girl who was a Catholic. I fought and fought for a civil marriage but finally succumbed to the proposition that our children could be reared in the Lutheran faith provided we had a Catholic wedding. My conscience tormented me after the ceremony. It killed every bit of her affection for me, and finally our marriage was wrecked through this and a few other difficulties. I am suing for divorce because she has left me and has refused to return. Of course, in all honesty I have made every effort to bring about a reconciliation. I wish to know how to unbind my conscience. I cannot attend church until all these threads of my life are back in harmony."
"I am a Norwegian woman, and I married an Irish Catholic man. We were married by a priest, and I signed a paper which said that, if we had children, they should be brought up as Catholics, in the Catholic religion. That was three years ago. Now we have a baby girl ten months old, and since the day she was born I felt that I could not consent to my husband's taking her to the Catholic church and having her baptized there. I know that you will think I should have thought of that before I was married, but I did not realize what I was doing at the time. My husband's priest has been to see me and says it is my duty to let my husband bring the baby up in his church as I promised to. The baby is now ten months old, and I know she should be baptized."
Because it is morally wrong for our young people to be married by Roman Catholic priests instead of their own pastors, to receive the five required instructions from the priest, and to promise to have their children baptized and reared in Roman Catholicism, the Lutheran Church has been emphatic in its warning against such alliances. Many of its congregations demand that members who have married Catholic life partners and accepted these conditions imposed by the priest must disavow these promises concerning children and acknowledge their wrong. Where this is not done, the offending members are no longer regarded as communicants in the congregation.
To prevent such spiritual disaster, however, every caution should be exercised. For the advice of those to whom the question of mixed marriage looms as a grave personal problem I suggest the following:
1) Every member of our Church, pledged to its truth and its support, must earnestly and prayerfully resolve never to leave the Church through marriage.
2) Our Christian young people who find themselves in love with members of other churches, particularly Roman Catholics, must inform the young man or young woman in question of their determined resolution to be married by their own pastor.
3) If the Roman Catholic Church can insist upon a written statement from Protestants, we have as much right to demand a written pledge from Catholics who marry our members. This promise should embrace the statement that the Catholic party will not insist upon a second ceremony by the priest and that he regards this marriage as valid in every respect despite the teachings of his Church. The statements should further specify that children of this union shall be brought up in our faith and that no objection will be raised to this procedure. Besides, the assurance must be given that no pressure is to be exerted by the Catholic party in the effort to win the non-Catholic member for that Church.
4) Our young people; should see to it that their life partner in a mixed marriage is consistently and tactfully given the Church's point of view, particularly through tracts, books, attendance at church services and adult classes. Lectures on the home and family worship have proved especially effective.
While all compromise of Christian faith and conviction leads to indifference or spiritual tragedy, the tie that binds is the oneness which is crowned with true, spiritual unity. How refreshing, then, to read that at a recent convention of Lutheran students, representing especially the great Mid-Western universities of our country, there was one matrimonial issue in which all these college men and women agreed! With absolute unanimity they stipulated that the husband or wife of their choice must be a Christian and an active church-member. Ninety-three per cent insisted upon membership in their own Church.
Less decisive but significant is the result of a study conducted by Ray Erwin Baber (Journal of Social Hygiene, 1936, p. 117). For a number of years Professor Baber has been offering a course on marriage and family life at New York University. Tabulating the attitude of 642 university students (321 young men and 321 young women from the junior and senior classes), he found that 42 per cent of the men and 58 per cent of the women said that they would not marry "a person of a different religious faith (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish) from their own." Even if they married a member of another Church, 91 per cent of the men and 95 per cent of the women refused to change their religion and adopt that of their mate. Investigating the attitude of 189 parents, Professor Baber found that 80 per cent of the fathers and 81 per cent of the mothers expressed their unwillingness to have their sons i marry outside their religion. About 85 per cent of 220 parents expressed their disapproval of a mixed marriage for their daughter. Altogether the group of 642 college men and women regarded the same religious faith as more desirable than moral standards, wealth, age, and family, but as less essential than disposition and personality, health, intelligence, and education.
The wife of Matthew Henry, celebrated commentator of the Bible, had the right standard for gauging happiness. She was the only daughter of a wealthy merchant and the heiress to his estate, and when the young Henry sought her hand, the father objected that, while her suitor was scholarly, polite, and an excellent preacher, he was really a stranger to the family. "Why," the father insisted, "I don't even know where he comes from." "Quite true," replied the daughter; "but I know where he is going and would like to go with him." If two young people are completely agreed in their devotion to the Savior and know, beyond all doubt, that they are going to heaven, theirs is the greatest joy that God Himself can give to His children.
Because a heart-deep oneness of Christian faith reduces misunderstanding to a minimum, encourages a proper appreciation for the feelings of others, inculcates the essential virtue of unselfishness, and affords a spiritual basis for the strength and comfort of the soul, the religion of Jesus Christ has become a safe and sure stabilizer for the family. Offering the pervading presence of Christ, the Church tells all twentieth-century young people that there may still be a "home, sweet home" for them under the gracious guidance of their God, provided they resolve with Joshua of old: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." If on the happy day when they kneel before the altar they take Christ with them as the Third in their union and pledge themselves to establish the family altar, to attend church regularly, to participate actively in the work of their congregation, to accept the Word of God as the guiding star through the besetting darkness that may enshroud their married life, they will have a home in which supreme human happiness may be found. This home may not have all the appointments and refinements which men are prone to prize; it may never be distinguished as the home of a leader in the world's intellectual, commercial, or industrial life; it may have no well-beaten path to its door as the habitations of the world's celebrities; but, above and better than all this, it will end the search for the benediction of peace; it will be a haven of refuge and a sanctuary of spiritual regeneration; it will, in short, be a temple of Christ. And they who live therein will be blessed, ineffably blessed, by His royal, redeeming presence.