Bishop on Divorces

"Since no one else has said it publicly, and it seems to many of us that it needs to be said, let me give brief expression to our sense of shame and humiliation that in the family of our Chief Executive there should be recorded two Reno divorces, with one 'remarriage' and another in the offing, in a year.

"That so little sense of the moral responsibilities of high position should be manifested by the family . . . seems to us to be a family disgrace, a disgrace to the nation, and a disgrace to the Church of which the family are members and in which they are occasional worshippers. There have been some expressions of pride among Churchmen in having a fellow Churchman, a parish warden and vestryman, and a cathedral trustee, as President. Pride came before a fall. Humiliation has followed. We need another 'new deal.' "

Thus in last week's Living, Church did a high-placed Episcopal bishop speak out for the first time against the divorces within the Episcopalian family of President Roosevelt. After Elliott Roosevelt received his Nevada divorce last year, he could find no Episcopal clergyman who would defy the canons of his church and marry the President's son to Ruth Googins; therefore the service had to be performed by a retired Congregationalist minister (TIME, July 31). The second White House divorce and possible remarriage outside the church is scheduled for late this month when Mrs. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Dall completes her six-week residence in Nevada (TIME, June 25).

The President was not taken to task for allowing his children to throw off their marriage vows so lightly by Rt. Rev. James Edward Freeman, Bishop of Washington who is far too politic to antagonize the White House. Nor did Rt. Rev. William Thomas Manning. Bishop of New York, in whose diocese lies the President's own Hyde Park, speak out as he once did against the divorce of the late Mrs. 0. H. P. Belmont. The letter-writer to the Living Church who said what he thought needed to be said was Rt. Rev. Charles Fiske, 66, Bishop of Central New York, high churchman and ardent Democrat.

In an editorial backing up Bishop Fiske's position the Living Church declared:

"One sympathizes, of course, when heart-rending conditions in a home lead to marital shipwreck, particularly when, as in these cases, innocent children are involved. But a divorce followed by a remarriage five days later evokes no such sympathy . . . and a second divorce in the same family, with the hint of another possible remarriage in the offing, certainly does not seem to indicate the kind of parental influence that one might expect from a family of strong religious and social interests. The most discouraging feature of it all is that neither the President nor his wife has seen fit to give any public intimation that they do not regard these proceedings as wholly regular, normal and consistent with the Christian religion."

Editor Guy Emery Shipler of The Churchman, weekly liberal journal, in noting that the Roosevelt divorces had caused much talk in Church circles, observed: "The American people didn't elect Roosevelt's family to the Presidency."

On the morning of his inauguration Mr. Roosevelt stopped for 20 minutes at St. John's Episcopal Church, across from the White House for a brief service. In the following fortnight he twice attended St. Thomas', as he used to do when Assistant Secretary of the Navy. This church has since been jampacked every Sunday by worshippers hoping to see the President again, but not until March a year later was their curiosity satisfied. His only other appearance in church in Washington was on Easter 1933, when he attended Washington Cathedral. Bishop Freeman and the Cathedral dean gave communion to the President in his pew while Mrs. Roosevelt partook kneeling at the altar rail. On Easter 1934, President Roosevelt held regulation naval services on the Nourmahal on which he was cruising with Vincent Astor.

President Roosevelt's own church is small vine-clad St. James in Hyde Park. There he attends frequently, if not regularly, is senior warden and some years ago received from Bishop Manning a certificate in honor of his having completed 25 consecutive years as vestryman.

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