Joseph Stansbury, Catholics and the Marriage Bill (1866)
“ And, even if the fact of their possessing civil validity would increase the number of such marriages, it would seem a questionable mode of discouraging an undesirable marriage to take care that, when contracted, it should have no force in law, but that parents and children should live out the rest of their days under the perpetual stigma and damage of illegitimacy. ”
Joseph Stansbury, Catholics and the Marriage Bill (1866)
“ And Catholics should remember what a benefit the alteration of the law would confer on thousands of families among their Protestant fellow subjects. As men and as Christians, they cannot be indifferent to this fact. By keeping the law in its present state, no real good it effected, but infinite harm is done — mischiefs which will be developing themselves in families for generations to come, unless remedied. Experience shows it impolitic and impossible to prevent such marriages; humanity and policy dictate the removing from them the still lingering consequences of an obsolete stigma. ”
Joseph Stansbury, Catholics and the Marriage Bill (1866)
“ In the case of those who believe such marriages to be contrary to a Divine precept, we have no course to pursue except to endeavour to convince them of what we consider to be their error of judgment; but those who sanction and are instrumental to such marriages are, it would seem, bound irresistibly to consent to their being made civilly valid. To those who have contracted such marriages, their legalization must prove a precious boon, and the question arises, is their welfare to be sacrificed to extraneous considerations? ”
