customed zeal you will do everything
in your power to prevent abuses in regard to the Sacrament of
Matrimony, which is great in Christ and the Church, and to induce
the faithful to prepare for receiving it by Prayer, by works of
Charity, and by approaching the Sacrament of Penance to purify their
souls.--Yours faithfully in Christ,

[Image: Cross] A. BROWNRIGG."

"MY DEAR BRETHREN,--We have been very much pained to learn, within
the past month, that marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics
have increased very much in this city of Kilkenny. Many
_evil-disposed_ persons, utterly unmindful of the prohibitions of
the Church, and regardless of the dreadful consequences they bring
on themselves, have not hesitated to enter into those _unholy
matrimonial alliances_ called "Mixed Marriages," which the Catholic
Church has always _hated and detested_. Those misguided Catholics,
who do not deserve the name, have not blushed to go, in some
instances, before the Protestant Minister, in other instances,
before the Public Registrar, to ask them to assist at their marriage
with a Protestant. By contracting marriage in this way, they run a
great risk of bringing on themselves and on their children, should
they have any, the _maledictions_ of Heaven instead of the blessings
of religion. In order to put a stop to this growing abuse, and to
prevent it from spreading like a contagion to other parts of the
Diocese, we beg to remind the faithful of certain regulations which,
for the future, shall have force in the Diocese of Ossory in
reference to the Catholics, who so far forget themselves as to
contract such marriages.

"1. In the first place, any one who contracts a "Mixed Marriage"
without a dispensation from the Holy See and before a Protestant
Minister or a Registrar is, by the very fact, guilty of a most
grievous mortal sin by violating a solemn law of the Church in a
most grave matter.

"2. The Catholic who assists as witness at such marriage also
commits a most grievous sin by co-operating in an unlawful act.

"3. Both the Catholic party contracting the marriage and the
Catholic witnesses to it cannot be absolved by any priest in the
Diocese of Ossory, unless by the Bishop or by those to whom he
grants special faculties.

"4. In order more effectually to deter people fro