Mixed Marriage in Quebec

Ever since 1908, when the Pope declared that mixed marriages of Catholics and Protestants by Protestant clergymen were contrary to Catholic canon law, Catholic judges in Canada's overwhelmingly Catholic province of Quebec have declared such unions illegal and annulled them. But last week the highest tribunal in the Province, the Court of Appeals, unanimously threw out such an annulment, indicating that a papal decree did not change the laws of Quebec.

Before 1908 mixed marriages were not questioned in Quebec, because in 1741 Pope Benedict XIV declared that in The Netherlands and Belgium a Catholic could marry a "heretic" (i.e., a non-Catholic) without observance of Catholic ritual. Pope Clement XIII extended this ruling to Canada in 1764. The "Benedictine dispensation" was still in force when the present Quebec civil code was promulgated in 1866. But after Pius X revoked it in 1908, Quebec judges began interpreting the civil code provision that impediments to marriage "remain subject to the rules followed hitherto in the various churches" to mean they remain subject to papal ruling. They consistently invalidated mixed marriage not performed with "due precautions" by a Catholic priest.

Over 100 Quebec mixed marriages have been annulled in the last 33 years. Since there is usually collusion in annulment cases, none was appealed. Last week's appeal was lodged not by the husband or wife but by the Anglican clergyman who married them. He had been attacked for performing the marriage and decided to prove he had a legal as well as a spiritual right to do so. Four of the five judges who upheld him are Roman Catholics.

Editorialized the Quebec Chronicle Telegraph: "It is not for the Catholic Church to impose an inferior status on the clergy of other denominations before the civil law or to penalize innocent parties because one of its own members has failed to respect the canon law."

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