Episcopalians and Divorce

The Protestant Episcopal Church numbers many a human pillar who has been divorced and remarried. Perennially the Church faces a question which will not be downed: What to do about such good people who get civil divorces, wish to remarry in church? The Episcopal canon on marriage, as liberalized in 1931, is still strict and specific: rectors may marry only those divorced persons who are 1) innocent parties in divorces for adultery; 2) innocent partners in marriages annulled for premarital cause. But not a few parsons, in dioceses with liberal bishops, marry divorcees anyway and get away with it.

Two years ago, at the request of the Episcopal House of Bishops, the Woman's Auxiliary of the Church formed a nine-woman commission to study marriage & divorce, present their views to the male commission which broods over the question between General Conventions (next one: next October). Chairman of the female commission is the Auxiliary's Executive Board Chairman Mrs. Robert G. Happ of South Bend, Ind. Some other members: Mrs. Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch of Manhattan's Greenwich House (settlement); Mrs. Charles Leslie Glenn, wife of the popular rector of Christ Church, Cambridge, Mass.; Mrs. Norman B. Livermore, San Francisco socialite and clubwoman.

Report's nub: There should be a more thorough preparation by the Church of couples planning Christian marriage. But divorces do take place. "If a divorced person who has been in communion with this Church desires to remarry after a reasonable time and desires, as does the partner of this second marriage, the blessing of the Church, this might well be bestowed when the parish priest or a suitable committee are assured, after examination of the circumstances involved, of the genuine desires and purpose of both participants to lead a Christian life. . . . But no priest unwilling to perform such a ceremony should be required to do so."

Deputies to the General Convention are not only all male, but usually oldish and conservative. The 1937 Convention voted down a less liberal amendment of the marriage canon. It will be news if the 1940 Convention proves itself much younger or less conservative.

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