Religion: The Rules

“It sometimes happens that as a condition of marriage one of the partners is required to sign a declaration that the children born of the marriage will be brought up in the practice of a religious system in which he or she doesn’t believe . . . We strongly deprecate such mixed marriages, and we assert that in no circumstances should an Anglican give any undertaking as a condition of marriage that the children should be brought up in the practice of another communion.”

In these words the bishops of the Anglican communion, assembled under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury for the eighth Lambeth Conference last summer, expressed their collective view of the well-known Roman Catholic rules for non-Roman partners of “mixed” marriages.

Last week, at a Roman Catholic Church in London’s Chelsea, Anglican Henry Pears Fisher, 30, a barrister and fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, married Roman Catholic Felicity Sutton, 26, an artist. They were married by Fr. Alphonso de Zulueta, “subject to the usual conditions of the Catholic Church,” that is to say: 1) no other religious wedding ceremony could be performed; 2) any children of the marriage were to be brought up as Roman Catholics. The groom’s mother and five brothers were present, but his father was unable to attend. He is Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury.