Roman Catholics: Mixed Marriage

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In Roman Catholic eyes, civil and religious marriages between two Protestants, Jews, or atheists are perfectly valid, but a mixed marriage in which one spouse is a Catholic is another and more com plicated matter. If the couple weds before a minister or a justice of the peace, they are no better than man and mistress.

Even if they make their vows before a priest, canon law forbids any nuptial Mass, insists that the Catholic party seek the conversion of his spouse, and demands that the Protestant promise in writing to raise any children as Catholics.

Such rules have long struck many Protestants as the height of ecclesiastical arrogance, and last week the Committee on Church and Nation of the Church of Scotland (1,307,000 members) came right out and said so. In a report to the General Assembly of the Kirk, the committee declared that the Catholic attitude toward mixed marriages "cannot escape unqualified moral condemnation." It urged the Kirk to warn young people about the dangers of marrying Catholics, argued that "no member of the Church has any moral right to make such a promise binding children yet unborn to be brought up in what he believes to be in error," suggested that the British ambassador "make representations to the Vatican."

The Kirk report could hardly be praised for its ecumenical tone, and a decade ago might have inspired Catholic polemicists to a chorus of criticism. But not in the era of open-minded Pope John XXIII. Among the proposals scheduled for discussion when the Vatican Council reconvenes next fall is an important schema on the sacraments, prepared with the help of Rome's Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. If the schema is approved, Protestants would no longer be forced to promise in writing that they would raise offspring of a mixed marriage as Catholics. Moreover, some bishops are expected to ask that the council also accept the validity of mixed marriages contracted before non-Catholic clergy.