Matrimony
41. Matrimony
1. Man is by nature both gregarious and political. And, as Aristotle says (Ethic. viii 12), he is more strongly inclined by nature to connubial society than to political society. In a word, man has not only a tendency (as all living bodies have) to propagate his kind, and (as herd animals do) to live with his kind, he has a tendency to the stable unions of marriage, family, and state. Thus, marriage belongs to the domain of the natural law. The conjugal union of marriage is an institution of nature.
2. The majority of men are called to this conjugal union, but it is not imposed upon each individual as a duty. That many should marry is necessary for the common good. Yet the same common good requires that some should be devoted to the contemplative life, to which marriage with its duties is a great obstacle. Besides, we have ample teaching in scripture of the excellence of virginity; chastity is one of the counsels of perfection. Hence, not all individuals are required to marry. The natural law is observed if a sufficient number marry to maintain and propagate the race.
3. The conjugal act of man and wife is by no means sinful. Scripture (I Cor. 7:3) says: "Let the husband render the debt to his wife." The opinion that the marital action is sinful is both mistaken and heretical.
4. The marital act rightly performed by man and wife is an act of virtue, and therefore is a meritorious act.
42. Matrimony as a Sacrament
1. A sacrament is a sensible sign, instituted by Christ, to signify and confer grace. Matrimony meets the requirements of this definition. Hence, it is truly a sacrament.
2. Matrimony is instituted for the begetting of children according to God's providence and law. It was established from the beginning, before the fall of man, as a holy institution of nature. It was raised to supernatural rank by our Lord when he made it a sacrament.
3. Like every sacrament, matrimony confers grace upon those who receive it worthily. It also confers the special sacramental grace which helps the spouses to be faithful in the performing of all their duties.
4. The actual use of marital action is not an integral element in the sacrament of matrimony.
43. Betrothal
1. A betrothal is a promise of future marriage. It is not a marriage, but a pledge or promise of marriage.
2. It is possible for a betrothal to be contracted for a child who has at least some understanding of a contract, even though he be unable to make a contract of his own accord. {-The Church urges pastors and parents to use all effort to avoid and prevent any sort of nuptial agreement or promise before the parties are themselves old enough to marry.-}
3. A betrothal is a contract, but not an indissoluble one. It can be dissolved by the mutual consent of the parties it binds; or by the fact of one party's entering religion; or by one party's marrying another than the betrothed; and also in other ways. If the betrothal has been formally made as a religious rite, it should not be dissolved without appeal for the judgment of the Church.
44. Definition of Matrimony
1. Matrimony is a joining. It unites spouses in the task of begetting and rearing children, and it dedicates them to one common life.
2. Matrimony, as a word, derives from mater which means mother, and, perhaps, from munus which means duty. Matrimony is sometimes called nuptials; this word comes from nubere which means to veil, for it was an ancient custom to veil the heads of spouses. Matrimony constitutes a man and wife as a conjugal society, and this word comes from conjugium which means a pining, or a yoking.
3. Peter the Lombard describes matrimony as "the marital union of a man and a woman, which involves their living together in undivided partnership."
45. Marriage Consent
1. The effecting cause of matrimony is the consent of the parties making the matrimonial contract, which is a sacramental contract as well.
2. This essential consent must be manifested outwardly, by words if possible, or at least by unmistakable signs.
3. The consent must be expressed in the present tense. Expressions of future agreement may make a betrothal or engagement, but not a marriage.
4. The outwardly manifested consent must express a true inner will and intention. Consent given falsely or jestingly does not make a true marriage.
5. Nor can the consent be secret. There must be witnesses to it. Secret consent of parties to a contract can make a true contract, but not a true and sacramental marriage. According to the institution of Christ, sacraments are to be administered by the Church. The Church cannot make or abrogate a sacrament; but the Church can, and indeed must, determine the conditions in which a sacrament can be received. The laws of the Church concerning sacraments are, on the one hand, a shield against irreverent use of most holy things; on the other hand, these laws consult the true good of the faithful. Therefore, the Church has decreed most wisely that the secret consent of parties to a marriage (that is, clandestine marriage) cannot constitute the sacrament of matrimony.
46. Consent Under Special Aspects
1. We have seen that marriage consent cannot be expressed in the future tense; the spouses must accept each other here and now when they utter their consent. This is so even if an oath is added to the words of promise. For a promise, with or without an added oath, expresses what has not yet happened. A marriage happens at the moment consent is given and expressed.
2. A consent to future marriage, even with an oath, and even if followed by carnal use or marital rights, does not make a true marriage.
47. Compulsory and Conditional Consent
1. Consent is a voluntary or free-will act. Now, as we have seen elsewhere in these studies (la Ilae, q. 6), an act may be voluntary and yet have in it an element of involuntariness. Thus, the captain of a ship who throws overboard a valuable cargo in time of storm, wills to perform the act, but does not wish to perform it; he would not perform it were he not afraid of losing both ship and cargo if he retained the goods on board. Therefore, it appears that a kind of compulsion can be back of a free consent. There is such a thing as a compulsory consent, or a contract made under duress, but the stress of circumstance which compels the consent is, in contracts, from other people and not from storms or irrational creatures. Now, a contract made under duress is a contract, but, in both civil and ecclesiastical law, it is a voidable contract.
2. It is possible for a normal person, and even a person of steady and reliable character, to be so moved by fear as to consent to a contract under its stress.
3. Consent given under stress of fear invalidates the marriage contract. Marriage is a permanent bond; it involves "a lifelong bargain." Now, a person who is moved by fear to consent to a situation, does so to escape a danger, but hardly intends to bear the unpleasant situation permanently after the danger is past. Hence, it is unlikely that consent under compelling fear is really a consent sufficient for marriage. In any event, the Church, which has the right of legislating upon the essential conditions for receiving a sacrament, has declared compulsory consent insufficient for the sacrament of matrimony.
4. Some have thought that the party who uses compulsion to make the other party marry him is truly married; for there can be no question of his free will and full consent in the contract. But this is quite impossible; marriage means the joining of two wills in a common consent. A man cannot be the true husband of one who is not his wife; nor can a woman be the wife of a man who is not her husband. What prevents true consent for one of the parties prevents the marriage.
5. A condition attached to the consent does not necessarily prevent a true marriage, unless it be a future condition, or a condition that conflicts with the very nature of marriage. Thus, there is no marriage if one party says, "I take you for my true husband (wife) on condition that you will not drink any more." Nor is there a marriage if the consent is given on condition that there will be no children.
6. Parents cannot compel their children to marry.
48. Object of the Consent in Marriage
1. The consent that makes a marriage is, implicitly, the consent to the use of marital rights.
2. The essential end of marriage is the begetting and rearing of children, and the control of fleshly tendencies. The parties may have many other accidental or nonessential ends in view, good or bad. Thus a person may marry for wealth, or for social position, or to prevent another from getting the person espoused, or to reform the person married, or for a variety of other reasons. But the essential end of marriage is in marriage itself, and those who assume the marital state assume what that state is, no matter what their individual purposes and intentions may be. The accidental ends (the personal or individual purposes and intentions of the spouses) cannot prevent their marriage from being a true one. Thus a woman who marries for social position is a married woman, despite her unworthy purpose in marrying. A man who marries for wealth is a married man, notwithstanding his personal objective in taking a wife.
49. The Blessings of Marriage
1. The disorder brought into human life by original sin has made the generative act so intensely emotional as to remove it from the ready control of reason. Hence, to justify this act in fallen man, some compensating goods or blessings must attach to marriage.
2. Such goods are listed by Peter the Lombard (iv Sent. D. 31) as: fidelity, offspring, sacrament. Fidelity keeps the man and wife true to one another exclusively in the performing of their marital act. Offspring is the good fruit of the marital act, and belongs to it in intention even if the marriage proves unfruitful. Sacrament is the holiness of the state and duties of spouses.
3. Of the three marriage goods or blessings, sacrament is the most excellent. For that which makes marriage a divinely instituted and supernatural state is its most notable and essential blessing.
4. Since the three marriage goods or blessings-sacrament, fidelity, offspring-are the things that make the marriage act different from the lawless use of sex, it follows that these three blessings justify and sanctify the marriage act, and remove it entirely from the category of sin.
5. Therefore, without the marriage blessings or goods, the marriage act could not be justified as a good act.
6. Yet a spouse, seeking only pleasure in the marital action, would not be guilty of serious sin unless his quest were such as to involve a will and intention to illicit indulgence were lawful means unavailable to him.
50. Impediments to Matrimony
1. What hinders or prevents a marriage between certain persons is called an impediment. Some impediments hinder marriage; they prevent it if it has not yet been contracted, yet do not dissolve it if it has already occurred. Other impediments absolutely prevent marriage between the parties, thus making it impossible for them to enter upon a valid contract of marriage, at least without dispensation. The first type of impediment is called prohibiting; the second type is called diriment. The word diriment means "utterly destroying."
51. Error as an Impediment to Marriage
1. An error concerned with the persons or the particulars of a marriage is a lack of knowledge in one or both of the parties to the contract, and therefore it is a hindrance to consent; for consent is a knowing acceptance of a situation; one cannot enter upon a free agreement without sufficient knowledge.
2. Yet an error which can render a marriage void must be an error in essentials. If a man marries the wrong twin, being assured deceivingly that it is the right one, there is no marriage. But if a man marries a woman who has falsely informed him about her age, or fortune, or nationality, the marriage stands.
52. Slavery as an Impediment
1. The condition of a slave prevents him from rightly fulfilling the duties of marriage. For a slave has not free control of his person, and therefore cannot properly transfer that control to another. Still, if a person knows that the other party is a slave, and marries him none the less, the marriage is valid.
2. And indeed, since, as St. Paul says (Gal. 3:2, 28), "In Christ Jesus . . . there is neither bond nor free," a slave has as much right to marry as a freeman.
3. A husband who sells himself into slavery does not, by this fact, break his marriage. For nothing that happens after a true and valid marriage is contracted can dissolve it.
4. Various human customs and civil laws prevail about the children of a father who is a slave. It seems most reasonable to say that, on the score of freedom or bondage, the children inherit the condition of the mother. {-This discussion is now irrelevant.-}
53. Vows and Orders as Impediments
1. A simple vow which is in conflict with the state and duties of marriage is a prohibiting impediment, but does not annul a marriage. However, a person with such a simple vow sins by marrying unless he has first obtained dispensation from his vow at the hands of the proper ecclesiastical authorities.
2. A solemn vow of chastity in a religious order or congregation is a diriment impediment of matrimony. Once the vow is formally taken, it renders a subsequent marriage invalid.
3. A man who has received subdeaconship has solemnly taken upon himself the obligation of celibacy. Therefore, he cannot thereafter contract a valid marriage. In some Eastern rites, a married man can be ordained; but it is a general ecclesiastical law that no ordained man can (after subdeaconship) enter the married state.
4. The fact that a true marriage exists does not necessarily bar a man from sacred orders. If the wife dies, or if she freely consents to release her husband permanently from the marital obligation, the husband can be ordained; he receives with his ordination to subdeaconship the obligation of perfect and perpetual celibacy.
54. Blood Relationship as Impediment
1. Blood relationship or consanguinity is established by natural descent from a common ancestor.
2. Degrees of consanguinity are distinguished according to lines. The ascending and descending line (father, son, grandson, great-grandson) is the direct line. The lines on the various levels of the ascending and descending line are called lateral or collateral lines (brother, sister, first cousins, second cousins, and so on).
3. Consanguinity is, by natural law, an impediment to marriage between certain closely related persons. It would be contrary to the ends of marriage, chief of which is the welfare of offspring, if inbreeding were practiced. What was necessary in the beginning of the race is not needed now. The voice of nature, as well as the voice of human experience, proclaims the unlawfulness of marriage between near relatives.
4. The Church, by her disciplinary or regulative laws (canons), fixes the degrees of consanguinity within which marriage is forbidden.
55. Affinity as Impediment
1. Affinity is the relationship of a married person with in-laws. By becoming one flesh through marriage, each of the two spouses contracts a relationship with all the blood relatives of the other spouse. And this is affinity.
2. Affinity sets up a lasting relationship. It does not cease to exist for a husband whose wife dies, nor for a widow with reference to her late husband's relatives.
3. Formerly, unlawful carnal intercourse established affinity, but this is so no longer. Affinity arises out of valid marriage only.
4. Affinity is not contracted by betrothal or engagement, but arises only out of true and valid marriage.
5. Affinity does not cause affinity. Relatives of one spouse are not related by affinity to relatives of the other spouse. Affinity exists only between a husband and the blood relatives of his wife, and between a wife and the blood relatives of her husband. A sister of one spouse is free to marry a brother of the other spouse. And a man who marries a widow does not contract affinity with the relatives of her late husband; nor does a woman who marries a widower contract affinity with the relatives of his late wife.
6. Affinity voids marriage throughout the whole direct line. It is a diriment impediment. Thus a widow or widower cannot marry parent or grandparent of the deceased spouse. Affinity voids marriage (and therefore is a diriment impediment) in the lateral fine to the second degree inclusive. Thus a widower cannot marry his late wife's sister or niece.
7. Degrees of affinity are computed according to degrees of consanguinity. Affinity has no degrees of its own. Thus a person related by blood in the second degree to one spouse, is related by affinity in the second degree to the other spouse.
8. Degrees of affinity are thus coextensive with degrees of consanguinity. A husband stands in the first degree of affinity with his wife's sister (collateral line), because the wife stands in the first degree of consanguinity with her own sister (collateral line). A wife stands in the second degree, collateral, of affinity with her husband's nephew; for that is the line and the degree of blood relationship which the husband has with his own nephew.
9. Affinity of kind and degree sufficient to nullify marriage makes marriage impossible (without dispensation, which is sometimes obtainable ), and when such a union is submitted to the judgment of the Church, she pronounces it no marriage.
10. In the official process of pronouncing on a union that is submitted to the Church for judgment, the method of charge and proof is followed.
11. In such processes, witnesses are called, and evidence is taken, as in other judicial procedures, so that the fact (if fact it be) of nullifying affinity or consanguinity, is indubitably known and established.
56. Spiritual Relationship as Impediment
1 & 2. Spiritual relationship is a bond arising, by church law, from the administering and receiving of the sacrament of baptism. It exists between the person baptizing and the person baptized, and also between the sponsors and the person baptized, but not between one sponsor and the other sponsor. It is a diriment impediment of marriage.
3. In an older day it was commonly considered that a spiritual relationship could arise from standing sponsor at confirmation, and even from giving catechetical instructions. But the Church has definitely settled the matter, as explained above.
4. The spiritual relationship of a godfather to the person baptized does not pass to his wife so as to make her also a spiritual relative of the person for whom her husband stood sponsor. The same is to be said of a godmother and her husband.
5. Nor does spiritual relationship pass to the children of a sponsor.
57. Legal Relationship as Impediment
1. Legal relationship is a bond arising out of adoption. Adoption is an act by which, under due process of civil law, a person takes another who is not his child, to be in fact, his child; or, at any rate, takes another to be a true member of the family or household.
2. Legal relationship is an impediment to marriage, and is regularly considered so in civil law as well as in church law. It is not seemly or suitable for those who live together as a family to intermarry.
3. Legal relationship exists between adopting parent and adopted child; also between adopted child and the natural children of the adopting parent; also between the adopting parent and the natural parents of the adopted child. Legal relationship is an impediment to marriage in all cases. But this impediment, as existing between the person adopted and the natural children of the one adopting, ceases when the adopting person dies, or when the children concerned come of age. In cases of legal relationship, the law of the Church follows the civil law of the country. Where civil law makes legal relationship a diriment or nullifying impediment to marriage, so does the Church regard it; where civil law makes this impediment only prohibitive, it is only prohibitive in church law.
58. Certain other Impediments
1. Impotence is physical inability to perform the marriage function. If this inability exists before marriage, and is incurable (that is, perpetual), it renders marriage impossible; it is a diriment impediment.
2. Inability to perform the marital act is diriment to marriage (if it occur before the valid marriage and is incurable) even if it come from preternatural causes, such as demons, and constitutes a kind of spell or bewitchment.
3. Insanity is an impediment to marriage, for madmen cannot freely and knowingly make a valid contract. If it comes after marriage, of course, insanity does not affect the marriage bond. If insanity is not constant, so that the afflicted person has intervals of sanity, he is capable of marrying at such times; yet it is most unwise for him to do so.
4. Incest committed by a spouse is a reason for which the other spouse may refuse marriage rights; but it does not dissolve a marriage.
5. Defect of age is an impediment to marriage. Girls under fourteen and boys under sixteen are debarred by church law from marrying. By the natural law, marriage is invalid for persons who have not attained puberty.
59. Disparity of Worship as Impediment
1. Disparity of worship exists between a baptized child of the Church and one who has not been baptized. It is a diriment impediment to marriage, by church law, and with good reason; for the chief end of marriage is the welfare of offspring. Parents divided upon the basic truth of life cannot well concur in the proper education of children, that is, cannot rightly attend to the welfare of their offspring.
2. Unbaptized persons can be validly married to each other.
3. A husband, converted to the faith and baptized, does well to remain with his wife even if she be unwilling to be converted also.
4. But if the nonbaptized spouse will not live in peace with the converted and baptized spouse, or live without offending God and doing spiritual harm to the baptized party, then the convert-spouse (who by baptism died to his former life and was reborn in Christ) may put away the unbaptized spouse as no longer his true and validly married mate. This fact is known from scripture (I Cor. 7:12-15).
5. Once the free status of such a spouse (who puts away his mate for reasons given above) is officially established by decision of the ecclesiastical tribunal, he can marry anew.
6. No other cause than unbelief and recalcitrance in the precise circumstances mentioned can nullify a marriage, and no cause can nullify a valid marriage between Catholics.
60. Uxoricide as Impediment
1. Uxoricide is wife-murder. This most horrible crime never has justification, even if a husband discovers his wife in the very act of committing adultery.
2. A man who kills his wife with the moral or physical concurrence of another woman whom he intends to marry, incurs a diriment impediment (of crime) which makes the proposed marriage impossible. The same is true of a wife who plots and acts with an unlawful lover to cause her husband's death.
61. Solemn Vows as Impediment
1. A person who has contracted marriage validly (and thus has had his marriage ratified) and has also performed the marital act (thus making the ratified marriage a consummated marriage) is bound to the married state of life, and cannot, without the free consent of his spouse, leave it to enter religion and take solemn vows in an order.
2. Yet if the marriage is ratified only, and not consummated, a spouse may leave it and enter religion, taking solemn vows, whether the other spouse consents or not. For until marriage is consummated, only a spiritual bond exists between the spouses; by consummation, a carnal bond is established, and the spouses are thenceforth really two in one flesh, Now, a purely spiritual bond may be dissolved by the spiritual death which a person undergoes in dying to the world by taking solemn vows in religion. But the carnal bond is not dissolved so.
3. When a spouse, after a ratified but not consummated marriage, takes solemn vows in religion, the other spouse is free to marry anew. Yet all this must be subjected to the ecclesiastical court for examination, judgment and official declaration of the free status of the abandoned spouse. Otherwise, a new marriage is not lawful.
62. Infidelity
1. A spouse may seek lawful separation from bed and board if the other spouse be guilty of infidelity, that is, commits adultery. This is not the case, however, if the spouse seeking separation is also guilty of adultery. Nor is it the case if the spouse now seeking separation has already forgiven the infidelity by using the marriage right with the offending party. Nor is it true in any case except that of actual, recognized, freely committed adultery.
2. No spouse, however, is bound to seek separation by reason of adultery on the part of the other spouse, unless the offending party be determined to continue committing this same sin. In this case, there is a duty to separate.
3. No spouse can, by private authority, effect a separation from bed and board. One spouse, truly injured by the adultery of the other, may indeed effect a separation from bed. But for full separation, the injured party must appeal for the judgment of the ecclesiastical court.
4. In all matters touching fidelity in marriage, husband and wife are on a par. Nothing is lawful for one and unlawful for the other.
5. Separation allowed by reason of infidelity does not dissolve marriage. The separated spouses are still husband and wife; neither can marry anew while the other lives.
6. Separated spouses should strive to be reconciled and to take up decent married life together, if and when this becomes at all possible.
63. Successive Marriages
1. At the death of either spouse, the marriage tie ceases to exist for the other. Widowed spouses are free to marry again.
2. The Christian marriage of a widowed person is a true sacrament. All the essentials of sacramental marriage are present. There is nothing to detract from the perfection of the present marriage in the fact that another or others preceded it.
64. Implications of Marriage
1. Marriage brings to the spouses the mutual obligation of rendering the debt, as it is called; that is, of surrendering the body to the generative act.
2. This sacred duty is to be rendered by either spouse at the will of the other, whether this will be expressed explicitly or indicated implicitly.
3. In the rendering of the marriage debt, husband and wife are on a plane of perfect equality; both are equally in command; both are equally held to obey.
4. Since marriage involves the duty of rendering the debt, neither spouse, without the full and free consent of the other, is free to make a vow which conflicts with marriage duty. If one spouse should make such a vow without the consent of the other, he sins. Nor must he keep the vow. Instead, he must do penance for a vow unlawfully made.
5. It is wise and prudent, if there be no danger of concupiscence, for spouses to abstain sometimes from the use of the marital act, for instance, on holy days.
6. Yet there is no serious obligation on spouses of practicing such abstention. And one spouse cannot justly enforce abstention on the other, even at times when it seems suitable for reasons of piety or religion. Recurrent physical inconvenience on the part of the wife makes it most suitable that the husband abstain, but if the marriage debt be demanded, even in these seasons, it is not to be refused.
7. The Church has wisely decreed that marriage (which may be lawfully enacted at any time) is not to be ceremoniously celebrated, with nuptial Mass and blessing, during the seasons of penance called Advent and Lent.
65. Plurality of Wives
1. The natural law is, as we have said many times, the eternal law of God for right human conduct, inasmuch as this law can be known by sound reason without divine revelation. It may be called man's natural awareness of what is right and fitting. Whatever upsets the normal proportion of an action or state, with reference to its end or purpose, is contrary to the natural law. Now, a simultaneous plurality of wives upsets the sane balance and proportion of marriage with reference to its end; at least it does so in a secondary way. For, though children may be begotten of many wives, and well reared too, yet a peaceful and united family life, which pertains to the welfare of offspring (the chief end of marriage), is rendered impossible in such circumstances. Besides, simultaneous plurality of wives destroys that blessing of marriage called fidelity, which is the exclusive use of marital rights by one husband and one wife. Further, if there be several wives, spouses cannot really be two in one flesh. For all these reasons, we say that simultaneous plurality of wives is in conflict with the natural law.
2. And yet this conflict with the natural law does not touch that law in its primary precepts, but in secondary ones. And, before the institution of matrimony as a sacrament, God, in the Old Law, permitted to some a plurality of wives-this, by way of exception. The primary requirement of the natural law respecting marriage is that offspring be generated, born, and well reared; this is the essential good of offspring; this can be attained even with plurality of wives.
3. It is certainly contrary to the natural law, as it is in conflict with Christian morality, for a man to have a concubine or mistress as well as a wife.
4. It is unquestionably a mortal sin for a man to make use of a concubine; this is plainly the terrible sin of adultery.
5. In the Old Testament, in cases where, by divine dispensation, plurality of wives was permitted, these wives were often called concubines, yet they were not really so in the accurate meaning of that term.
66. Bigamy as Cause of Irregularlity
1. An irregularity, in the technical sense in which we use the term here, is any physical or moral defect which, by decree of the Church, prevents a man from receiving the sacrament of holy orders. Now, bigamy (that is, a plurality of wives, a plurality of marriages) makes a man irregular. For he who is to administer the sacraments, must not himself be deficient with reference to the sacrament of matrimony. For marriage as a sacrament signifies the union of Christ with the Church, and this is a union of One with one.
2. A man who has one wife in law, and another in fact, is a bigamist, and incurs the irregularity mentioned above.
3. One who marries a non-virgin is adjudged irregular.
4. Baptism does not remove the fact of bigamy, nor the irregularity consequent upon bigamy.
5. In certain cases, it is possible for a bigamist to be dispensed from irregularity. {-Most of this discussion of irregularity from a cause of bigamy is wholly irrelevant or meaningless today.-}
67. Divorce
1. To achieve its full natural end, essential and secondary, marriage requires the permanent union of husband and wife. Therefore, permanence in marriage is a requirement of the natural law, at least in the secondary precepts of that law. And what is required by the natural law is required of all men without exception, Christian and pagan, Greek and Roman, Jew and Gentile. It is not just a requirement of church law that a man should cleave to his wife in permanent and unbroken wedlock.
2. It sometimes happened in the Old Law, that a man put his wife away by "a bill of divorcement," and that this exceptional act was sanctioned by Mosaic precept. But such a severance of the marriage bond is not possible when the marriage is also the sacrament of matrimony.
3. Our Lord himself tells us (Matt. 19:8) that the Mosaic permission for divorcing a wife was granted on account of the hardness of the hearts of the people, and adds, "From the beginning it was not so." It seems that this Mosaic permission amounted to a dispensation from the marriage bond to prevent the terrible crime of wife-murder to which the people were prone.
4. Yet it is not clear that the Mosaic "bill of divorce" permitted the separated spouses to marry again.
5. But it is clear that a husband, having repudiated his wife by a "bill of divorce," could never take her back again.
6. Doubtless, hatred of a wife, and whatever gave rise to that hatred, could be adduced as reasons for giving her the "bill of divorce," but it seems that these reasons had value only because they could lead directly to wife-murder.
7. The causes of the severance of spouses were not given in detail in a Mosaic "bill of divorce," but were expressed in a general way.
68. Illegitimacy
1. A child born out of true wedlock is called illegitimate.
2. An illegitimate child suffers inconveniences, such as being debarred from certain offices and dignities, and also with reference to inheritance. Both parents of illegitimate children are bound, by the natural law itself, to provide for them.
3. The positive or statute law establishes illegitimacy, and therefore the same law can remove it. Hence, illegitimate children can be legitimized by due process of law.