It is easy to see what hardship and wrong must follow the observance of this rule in the case of mixed marriages.

As a result, it is now the case that, in Ireland, marriages which the law of the land declares to be valid are declared null and void by the Church of Rome, and the children of them are pronounced illegitimate.  Nor is this a mere academic opinion:  such is the power of the Roman Church in this country that she is able to enforce her laws without deference to the authority of the State.

The celebrated McCann case is the most notable illustration.  Even in the Protestant city of Belfast we have seen a faithful wife deserted and her children spirited away from her, in obedience to this cruel decree.  And we have seen an executive afraid to do its duty, because Rome had spoken and justified the outrage.  Those who know intimately what is happening here are aware of case after case in which husband or wife is living in daily terror of similar interference, and also know that Protestants married to Roman Catholics, and living in the districts where the latter are in overwhelming majority, often find it impossible to stand against the odium arising from a bigoted and hostile public opinion.  Nor does such interference stop here.  Only a few weeks ago the kidnapping of a young wife by Roman Catholic ecclesiastics was prevented only by the brave and prompt action of her husband.  In this case a sworn deposition, made in the presence of a well-known magistrate and fully attested, has been published, and no attempt at contradiction or explanation has been made.  Let none imagine the Ne Temere question is extinct in Ireland.  It is at this moment a burning question.  Under Home Rule it would create a conflagration.  And surely there is reason for the indignation of Protestants.  Here we see the most solemn contract into which a man or woman can enter broken at the bidding of a system which claims supreme control over all human relations, public and private; and this, not for the maintenance of any moral principle, but to secure obedience to a disciplinary regulation which is regarded as of so little moral value that it is not enforced in any country in which the Government is strong enough to protect its subjects.

As if to define with perfect clearness, in the face of the modern world, the traditional claim of the Roman See, there has issued from the Vatican, within the last few weeks, a Decree which sets the Roman clergy above the law of the land.  This ordinance, which is issued motu proprio by the Pope, is the re-enactment and more exact definition of an old law.  It lays down the rule that whoever, without permission from any ecclesiastical authority, summons any ecclesiastical persons to a lay tribunal and compels them to attend publicly such a court, incurs instant excommunication.  The excommunication is automatic, and absolution from it is specially reserved to the Roman Pontiff.  This fact adds enormously to the terror of it, especially