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)...
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