When a picture tells a thousand words

This picture was posted today by the "History Lovers Club" on twitter.





































It shows the graves of a catholic woman and her protestant husband who the church authorities of the time (the late 19th century) in Roermond, the Netherlands, would not allow to be buried in the same graveyard.

As a man who is a member of the Church of England - which is a little difficult to categorise but would generally be considered Protestant if you had to put it on one side or the other -  and who is married to a Roman Catholic woman of Irish descent, Ireland having suffered a far from trivial share of religious dogmatism, I find this moving and very sad.

Thank God most of society is moving on from that kind of cruelty.

Comments

Jim said…
Sad really isnt it, some "experts" in the unknowable decide that a married couple cant be married together. I think it says more about how immoral religion is to be honest
Anonymous said…
The Church of England is still the same today.
Chris Whiteside said…
I don't know which Anglican chuurches the anonymous poster has had dealings with, but the ones I have had any connection in my lifetime are nothing like that.

My wife and I were married in her familky's local Catholic church, and the priest who married us invited the vicar of my own Anglican chuch to assist and our Angligan church choir to sing at the wedding, and both invitations were accepted.

A couple of years later our twins were baptised in a joint Anglican and Catholic ceremony which was held at my local Church of England Church with a catholic priest saying the words and anglican priests assisting.

As a second generation inter-church family member - my father was Church of England, my mother was United Reform - my parents had very little difficulty with intolerance from the Anglican church and I have had none: we have never had any difficulty on the Catholic side either. Certainly no problems over funerals or burials.

So no, I don't agree that the Church of England is still like that today - thank God.
Chris Whiteside said…
And Jim, what I think it says is not that religion is immoral but that some people are - specifically, people who were in prominent positions, in the century before last, in a religion which is supposed to be about love but completely failed to live up to the teachings of their own church.
Anonymous said…
St Begh's Church, Whitehaven
St Bridget's Church, Moresby


Chris Whiteside said…
The first of those two churches is not an Anglican Church, it is a Roman Catholic one, where my children took their first communion. Speaking as a Church of England member who has occasionally worshipped there, I have never been made anything other than welcome, despite the fact that I make no secret of not being a catholic.

I have visited St Bridget's church in Moresby two or three times, once by invitation when they were holding an event for which it was appropriate to have wider community representation, once when a friend was being buried there, and I think I may have been to one other service there.

I'm not going to claim great familiarity with that church but they certainly struck me as friendly and welcoming and not as the sort of people who would dream of behaving in the way which let to the picture at the head of this thread.

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Quote of the day 24th July 2020