17 AUGUST 1867, Page 2

The Papacy is worrying again about mixed marriages, and in

the oddest way. It has not prohibited them altogether, but has forbidden any priest to perform the ceremony if it is to be repeated in a Protestant church. It might as well prohibit the celebration if there is to be a breakfast afterwards. In its eyes the Protestant rite is a nullity, a secular and useless form, like civil registration, and to prohibit it can have but one end, to deter Protestants from marrying Catholics, and but one effect, to increase the number of marriages before the registrar. It cannot deter Catholics from such marriages, for their ceremony is left to them, and its decree is merely a gratuitous annoyance to the rival creed. Fortunately, the State is better than the Churches.