Case LXX: Marriage of a Woman Pregnant by Another Man

A country girl, named Laura, enjoyed an excellent reputation, and her uncle, eighty years of age, had assigned a considerable legacy to her in his will. Unhappily she had lately been seduced by a married man, who was regarded as very religious and most respectable. Finding herself pregnant by him, she resolved in her despair to save her honor, and secure her inheritance, by means of abortion. At that moment a chance of escape presented itself. A young man, named Norbert, having no suspicion of what had happened, offered to marry her, and wished their marriage to take place immediately. If Laura told him the truth, he would certainly withdraw his offer, and she would be left in her desperate plight. She therefore hurried to the neighboring town to consult Father Philip, who did not know her. She told him the whole story and asked whether in this case she might conceal her pregnancy and marry Norbert.

Question.—What should Father Philip reply?

The pregnancy of his bride by another man is undoubtedly a defect which not only renders the marriage minus appetibile to the bridegroom (to use the language of theologians), but is actually prejudicial to him; is, in fact, a defectus nocivus. St. Alphonsus says: "Just as one sins against justice who sells harmful merchandise to another who believes it good, so much more does one who wishes to contract marriage with a harmful defect" (1. VI. n. 864). A woman pregnant by another man by her marriage forces her husband against his will to receive some one else's child and bring it upas his own. She causes his legitimate children to share their inheritance involuntarily with one who has no right to it. Moreover, she exposes her husband, her children, and herself to all the miseries of an unhappy marriage, for it is quite possible that he may eventually find out the trick that she has played him. In some states he might even obtain a dissolution of his marriage in the secular court, in defiance of the law of God and the Church. Therefore, as a rule, all authors hold that under such circumstances the woman is bound sub gravi either to refrain from marriage or to reveal her condition to her future husband. Father Philip explained all this fully to Laura, but she replied that marriage was the only way for her to save her reputation and her inheritance, to keep secret the sin committed by the partner in her guilt, to preserve his family life, and to protect the whole parish from public scandal. As to the dangers that the priest pointed out to her, she firmly believed that, under the existing circumstances, her husband would never find out what she had done, and that she would succeed in making good to him and his legitimate children any loss that they might incur out of her own means.

Taking all these circumstances into consideration, Father Philip thought that he could discover the following reasons for acceding to Laura's request.

(1) The prohibition of marriage in such a case is based upon the danger of causing the injuries enumerated above; but, in Laura's case, it seems that this danger is not great, and therefore there is no need to insist upon the prohibition. Even Lehmkuhl says, in his Casus conscientiae, II. n. 845, in discussing a similar case: "But if the girl were secretly to give birth before marriage and provide well for the child, in such a way that her motherhood remained entirely concealed, her pregnancy must be judged no differently from fornication without consequences." St. Alphonsus says (1. VI. n. 865) of such a woman that some authorities would permit her to give an evasive answer, should her husband question her on this point, or even to conceal her fault with a restrictio non pure mentalis, as in all probability it will never do him any harm at all.

(2) It can scarcely be a sin on Laura's part if, by concealing the fact of her pregnancy when she marries, she does what is not forbidden in se, sed solum propter periculum damni proximi, and is moreover the only means of averting evils of a much worse kind. Gury takes this view in his Casus conscientiae, II. n. 871, with regard to a similar case: "many make an exception if, with the wedding imminent, the girl could not provide for her reputation except through marriage, because then she would not be bound to undergo so great an injury to her reputation in order to avert temporal loss to the bridegroom."

(3) The chief reason, however, for not forbidding Laura's marriage seemed to Father Philip to be the extrema necessitas of the child that she had conceived; for, if she could not marry at once, she was in the greatest danger of yielding to the temptation to procure abortion. The child was therefore in extreme spiritual and bodily necessitas, and under existing circumstances Norbert alone could save it. In such a case any one would be strictly bound to even greater sacrifice than Norbert would make by this marriage; therefore he could not be rationabiliter invitus, if such a sacrifice were imposed upon him by Father Philip's decision. The latter, after he had well considered all the arguments in her favor, could not make up his mind either to prohibit the marriage or to force Laura to reveal her condition to Norbert. He simply admonished her to do her best to avert the dangers he had mentioned from her husband and the family.—Johann Schwienbacher, C.SS.R.