You cant remember, Cecil.
SYKES. Well, I never asked my mother to shew me her marriage
lines, if thats what you mean. What man ever has? I never
suspected--I never knew--Are you joking? Or have we all gone mad?
THE BISHOP. Dont be alarmed, Cecil. Let me explain. Your parents
were not Anglicans. You were not, I think, Anglican yourself,
until your second year at Oxford. They were Positivists. They
went through the Positivist ceremony at Newton Hall in Fetter
Lane after entering into the civil contract before the Registrar
of the West Strand District. I ask you, as an Anglican Catholic,
was that a marriage?
SYKES [overwhelmed] Great Heavens, no! a thousand times, no. I
never thought of that. I'm a child of sin. [He collapses into the
railed chair].
THE BISHOP. Oh, come, come! You are no more a child of sin than
any Jew, or Mohammedan, or Nonconformist, or anyone else born
outside the Church. But you see how it affects my view of the
situation. To me there is only one marriage that is holy: the
Church's sacrament of marriage. Outside that, I can recognize no
distinction between one civil contract and another. There was a
time when all marriages were made in Heaven. But because the
Church was unwise and would not make its ordinances reasonable,
its power over men and women was taken away from it; and
marriages gave place to contracts at a registry office.
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