Editing Ne Temere (section)

===Tilson case===
{{lang|la|Ne Temere}} focused on the validity of marriages in which only one party was a Catholic. Although it did not specifically make any mention of children born to such marriages, it did require the issuance of a dispensation. A condition of the granting of said dispensation was a promise that any children born of such union would be raised in the Catholic faith.

In [[common law]] jurisdictions the father, by what is called the principle of "paternal supremacy", has the right to decide the religious upbringing of all the children of the marriage.<ref>{{cite news|author=David Jameson |title=The Religious Upbringing of Children of Mixed Marriages: The Evolution of Irish Law|url=https://www.academia.edu/15170610 |work=New Hibernia Review, 18.2 (summer 2014) |pages=65–83|access-date=17 April 2019}}</ref> At first, this held also in the [[Republic of Ireland]], even if he had entered into a contrary agreement in writing. The [[Supreme Court of Ireland]] still upheld paternal supremacy in 1945 in a judgement that the children, whose father had died, should be kept in a Protestant orphanage rather than be placed in the charge of the Catholic mother.<ref>''Frost'', [1947] IR 3, decided at first instance by Circuit Judge [[Cahir Davitt]] and in the Supreme Court by [[Timothy Sullivan (Irish judge)|Chief Justice Timothy Sullivan]]</ref> It attributed no force to the signed promises that the father had made before the marriage nor to the argument that the 1937 [[Constitution of Ireland]], adopted eight years earlier, declared that "the State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society", and that it "acknowledges that the primary and natural educator of the child is the Family".<ref>[http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/cons/en/html#article41 Constitution of Ireland, articles 41 and 42]</ref> Largely because this judgement ignored the promises made in the prenuptial agreement, it caused deep resentment in Catholic circles.<ref>Jameson (2014), p. 75</ref>

In 1951 the Irish Supreme Court made a contrary judgement, upholding on appeal a 1950 [[High Court (Ireland)|High Court]] decision in a suit brought by a Catholic mother seeking the return of the four children whom their Protestant father had placed in a Protestant home to be raised as Protestants. The High Court ruled that the father was bound by the written undertaking he had given before marriage. The Supreme Court directed its attention to whether the prenuptial agreement was binding. Its own reasoning was that, "in upholding the contractual validity of the pre-marriage promise given by [the father, it] was rejecting an archaic principle of British law that would be the object of public scorn if it still applied in Ireland today".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2006/0118/opinion/how-a-case-can-be-misinterpreted-to-put-the-church-in-a-bad-light-734434725.html |last=Mullen |first=Rónán |title=How a case can be misinterpreted to put the Church in a bad light |work=Irish Examiner |date=18 January 2006 |access-date=17 April 2019}}</ref> It ruled that under the Irish Constitution the parents had "a joint power and duty in respect of the religious education of their children" and that neither parent had a right to dissolve an established contract.<ref>Jameson (2014), pp. 79−80</ref> The 1950−1951 decision was confirmed in a 1957 ruling of the Irish High Court that was not appealed, and corresponds to a New York court's decree upholding the binding character of such a prenuptial undertaking.<ref>Jameson (2014), p. 81</ref>

In its 2010 documentary ''Mixing Marriages'', BBC Radio Ulster broadcast an account of how in 1908, although the {{lang|la|Ne Temere}} decree did not declare invalid the marriages previously entered into otherwise than before the parish priest of the Catholic spouse, a Catholic father, who in vain demanded that his Presbyterian wife, whom he had married in a Presbyterian church, repeat the ceremony before a Catholic priest and allow their children to be brought up as Catholics, abandoned her and took away their two small children. Ensuing publicity by the local Presbyterian minister was a factor in turning Presbyterians against [[Irish Home Rule]].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11705764|title=How a mother's children were taken away forever|work=BBC News |date=7 November 2010|access-date=25 September 2017}}</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=0-iGAgAAQBAJ&dq=%22Agnes+McCann%22+%22Home+Rule%22&pg=PA166 D.George Boyce, Alan O'Day, ''Defenders of the Union: A Survey of British and Irish Unionism Since 1801'' (Routledge 2002), p. 166]</ref>