"Scandal to the World"

Once divorce has been allowed, there will be no sufficient means of keeping it in check within any definite bounds. Great is the force of example; greater still is that of lust. . . .--Pope Leo XIII (1880).

Oh, if only your country had come to know from the experience of others rather than from examples at home of the accumulation of ill which derive from the plague of divorce.--Pope Pius XII (1939).

With these two excerpts the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. last week officially showed its displeasure with the recent six-to-two decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ordering all States to recognize Nevada's easy divorces (TIME, Jan. 4). Issued by Benedictine Monk Edgar Schmiedeler, director of the National Catholic Welfare Conference's Family Life Bureau, the Church's statement hewed to the customary Catholic line that marriage is a vow taken before God and not to be set aside by courts of men.*

"American divorce," said the statement, "has practically made a farce of American marriage ... a scandal to the rest of the world." The Supreme Court decision, said the Catholics, bids fair "to make matters still worse." For the two dissenting Justices (Jackson, an Episcopalian; Murphy, a Catholic) there was praise.

Noting that there are 250,000 or more divorces yearly in the U.S., the Church suggested a cure: ". . . Complete un formity of standards in divorce laws."

*The Catholic Church does have a court of men -- the Sacred Roman Rota at the Vatican -- of whose yearly cases 85% concern marriage. Divorces are not granted; annulments sparingly given. Last year the Rota heard 87 cases, granted 29 annulments. Some grounds for annulment: defect of age, impotence, abduction, crime (adultery, homicide or both).

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