Concurrent Contract

There’s more to Beowulf than alliteration and I promise to move on, but it occurs to me that I should not move on without mentioning what may have been one of the most eloquent examples of alliteration ever allotted a line in the language..

Forty years ago the Episcopal Church made no allowance for divorce but did make provision for an annulment of a wedding that shouldn’t have happened. There were several grounds provided for an annulment such as lack of free, competent consent. But my favorite was “Concurrent contract inconsistent with the contract constituting canonical marriage.”

If ever there were evidence of the power of alliteration to make a phrase memorable, that is it. It’s really unfortunate that the eloquent author remains unknown and that the canons have been rewritten by authors with less of a gift for memorable language.

p.s. I now have a blog on Amazon.com. Log on to Amazon, search for Beyond Beowulf and click on it to come to the “author blog.”