Section — Bucceroni, Institutions of Moral Theology
Marriage of Old Persons
The Angelic Doctor, Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo, q. 15, a. 2 ad 14: "That act is against nature in the genus of lust from which generation cannot follow according to the common species of the act; but not that from which it cannot follow because of some particular accident, such as old age or infirmity."
Paulus Zacchias, book 9, title 3, VII, nn. 2-3: "Whenever a decrepit man contracts marriage, he is presumed capable of generating; for whenever a decrepit man is capable of intercourse, he can be presumed capable of generating, since from the authority of Aristotle and from daily experience we have that a man at any age whatever can generate, provided he can have intercourse and emit seed."
Since old persons retain the power of generating, and are certainly presumed to retain it unless the contrary is positively proved, for the power of generating is most natural, therefore they contract marriage licitly and validly, without any difficulty. And as regards men, daily experience establishes, and most learned physiologists assert, that at whatever age they are, they can generate, provided they are able to have intercourse and emit seed, as Zacchias himself affirmed. For the elaboration and production of male seed, once begun at the time of puberty, endures throughout the whole of life. And as regards women, no age can be defined at which the generative power ceases in them. For, as again is established from experience and from physiology, no time can be stated in old women at which menstruation can be said definitively to have ceased, from which an absolute incapacity for generating could be deduced in them. The menses, even once ceased, are restored again by several causes; and even without menses ovulation persists, and pregnancy actually occurs. Nevertheless, the power of generating, joined with effect, regularly fails in women from the age of 45-50, and is regularly diminished in men from the age of 50. Yet there are cases in which even sexagenarian and septuagenarian women generate; and septuagenarian men more easily generate with a younger woman. But detriment to offspring is not absent when there is a notable inequality in the age of the spouses. Let the learned Opuscula and Medicina Pastoralis of Joseph Antonelli be consulted, a man most versed in this matter and beyond all envy. Let also the Opuscula of the learned and erudite Francis Topai, a very distinguished surgeon in the City, be consulted.