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A Counterpoint

By Charles M. Hawes

When I was made “a priest in God’s Holy Catholic Church” in 1964 by the Episcopal bishop of New York, it was understood I was fully authorized to celebrate and administer the sacraments of Holy Baptism, the Holy Eucharist, and the sacramental rites of Holy Matrimony, the Reconciliation of a Penitent, and the Unction of the Sick. It was understood that no authority outside the church has the right to tell me whom I can baptize, give communion and absolution to, or lay hands on and anoint toward the work of their healing.

Curiously, in the state of North Carolina this has not been the case with Holy Matrimony.

Our state believes, and has legislated accordingly, that a priest of the Catholic Church — or any other minister of religion — can only officiate at the marriage or domestic union of people the state has previously consented to and licensed. This has meant that not only are the historic prerogatives of a church to bless and sanctify whomever it will inhibited and sometimes denied, but moreover the church has been drafted into functioning as an arm of the secular state. Historically, this has resulted in the church’s deplorable complicity in the furtherance of racism and social bigotry. It was forbidden by civil statute from 1715 until 1967 to marry or bless unions between whites and native Americans or African Americans or between people of different colors.

On Dec. 8 of this year, suit was filed in the General Court of Justice, 11 CVS 12041, by the register of deeds in this county, together with several clergy and lay citizens, to separate the duties of religious institutions and the state in matters relating to marriage. In effect, the suit would require that all marriages or domestic unions be registered through and witnessed by the register of deeds or other civil authorities established by the state. It would end the practice of clerical or religious officials acting as agents of the state in contracting civil marriage. And it would free clergy or religious authorities to solemnize and/or bless covenants of human relationship once again with or without the consent of any outside party or jurisdiction.

I am grateful to our register of deeds and his co-plaintiffs for trying finally to restore to Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God what is God’s. Some of my friends and I will co-sponsor a resolution before the Episcopal Diocesan Convention asking that it befriend this lawsuit.

The writer lives in Greensboro.