Word: rota
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Guglielmo Marconi was in Rome last week, just as the Rota, (highest Catholic marriage court) was about to hand down a decision annulling his marriage, in 1905, to the Hon. Beatrice O'Brien. Two years ago the Marconis obtained a divorce in Fiume, under the accommodating D'Annunzio régime. Onetime Signora Marconi has since remarried. It was supposed that Catholic annulment was sought either that she might have her marriage sanctioned by her Church, or that Signor Marconi too might remarry with Catholic ritual. Gossips thought they knew his new lady-one Elizabeth Paynter...
Meanwhile the Sacred Rota of Rome, harried by indignant Protestants, published the testimony it swore it received before annulling the marriage of Consuelo Vanderbilt to the Duke of Marlborough. This revealed breathtaking details. Before the Roman Catholic Diocese of Southwark, Eng., it stated, the Duke of Marlborough with Consuelo, his onetime Duchess, and Mrs. Belmont, her mother, and Mrs. Mary V. S. Tiffany, Consuelo's aunt, and Mrs. Lucy Jay, family friend, confirmed the following: In 1895, Consuelo Vanderbilt was secretly engaged to one Winthrop Rutherfurd. Her mother discovered so; commanded separation on grounds of social prestige. Consuelo demurred...
Brushing aside this question of principle, the Roman Catholic clergy pointed out the perfect technical propriety of the Vanderbilt- Marlborough annulment by the Rota, a court so august that the sheer weight of its legal machinery prevents it being set in motion except in behalf of litigants of some consequence. Said Father Parsons, editor of the Roman Catholic Weekly America, speaking over the radio at Manhattan: "Let it be remembered that the Rota has been sitting on cases such as this since 1323. For over 900 years persons having grounds for believing that their marriages are invalid have appeared before...
Catholics pointed out that the Rota is not the Pope...
Meanwhile the "High Church" Episcopalian weekly, the Living Church gleefully cried: "Give us, good Rota, some nice Latin words to use for a husband whose husbandship you have removed, and a wife upon whose wifehood you have trampled, for a marriage whose holy, sacramental character you have spurned and for a relationship to children which you have degraded unfathomably. . . . How can one be sure he is married? Marriage standards in Rome and Soviet Russia appear to be ap proaching a common plane...