When a personal life becomes public property

IN one sense the marriage of M s. Jacqueline Kennedy t Mr. Aristotle 1) Onassis is her own affair, , a private not a public f event. Certainly there is no cause for branding her as "a public sinner" as one "Vatican expert in matrimonial questions," Monsignor Francesco Fortino, is reported as having done in The Times.We are all sinners only most of us are fortunate enough not to have our delinquencies known. fwhen the parousia comes we will find ourselves levated from the positio9 of private to public sin rs so we should T have s me fellow feeling for tho e who have anticipated ,e event. Yet part of the price of appeari g in public life is that m ch of one's personal ife does become public property. Speculation 0 Mrs. Kennedy's motive. for marrying Mr. Onassi is both profitless and im ertinent: only she can krnf,w whether she was animated by love. or desire for mo icy, or security, or anythii else, but it is quite I gitimate to assess the lii ly effects of this marria e on public events and to analyse the public reactio I w s in New York when te news broke and the reaItion of the American p ople was surprise, shock, incredulity and dismay. 'mfrs. Kennedy's secret had been well kept but a rumpur of a possible culate. It was Cardinal marriar had begun to cirCushing who, in effect, spilt t e beans. 1 Que tioned by a reporter in oston he said: "My lips arie scaled, I can say nothin " but promptly went n to add that he expect d some announcement ould be made the follow ng week. That in fact d d it and the plans had tc be advanced, hence the ha te and flight of Mrs. Kennedy to Greece.
Personally I have great sympathy with the ninety or so Passengers who were turned off a public plane belonging to Olympic airways (which. of course, belongs to Mr. Onassis) to allow the "royal" party to depart. Is there any chance that Mrs. Kennedy's second marriage will be recognised by the Church? For many people if this happened far from making things better it would make them very much worse. The world-wide scandal would be immense and people would be finally convinced that in the Vatican marriage courts there is one law for the rich and another for the poor.
One point which could be raised is that the first marriage of Mr. Onassis was not a marriage which would be recognised by the Roman Catholic Church. The point could be made that the Greek Orthodox Church allows two divorces and that therefore the contract is not from its inception life-long. I am informed, however, by a high official of the Westminster curia that this point would be taken only if it could be shown at the time of the marriage that Mr. Onassis intended to make use of this escape provision and this would be in the nature of things very difficult to establish. Is the very widespread public disapproval of the marriage justified? The fact that Mr. Onassis is thirty years older than Mrs. Kennedy is a total irrelevancy. Some people like father-figures and others do not and that is the end of the matter.
The same consideration applies to the objection that from the American point of view Mrs. Kennedy is marrying a foreigner. What has really caused the anguish in the United States and the disapproval elsewhere is more reasonable, the feeling that Mrs. Kennedy has lowered herself by making this alliance.
America saw her still as one of an incomparable pair, who had embodied American idealism and all that was best in American life: had grieved.with her when her husband was murdered : had admired her fortitude and dignity in the face of an atrocious event.
Now she has linked herself with the jet set. with a group of people who arouse both envy and horror. much of whose time is spent in expenditure of a highly conspicuous and vulgar kind at a period when half the world is teetering on the edge of starvation. The contrast between President Kennedy's ideals of personal service and dedication to the community and Mr. Onassis's aims of personal power and the amassing of wealth is marked. All this may be a little unfair to Mr. Onassis: President Kennedy was not a saint and Mr. Onassis is not a monster. but this is how Americans have reacted.
And what of the Kennedy family? This is only the latest in a long series of blows. They will react to it with their usual buoyancy and courage. Mrs. Kennedy (or Mrs. Onassis as we must now learn to call her) was never absorbed by the Kennedy clan. was always a little apart from it and defended her independence and her claim to be a person in her own right. I have always had sympathy with her in this attitude but I must confess I wish that she had found some other means of demonstrating it