Chapter VII: Of Marriage of Conscience

Only from a most grave and most urgent cause, and by the local Ordinary himself, excluding the Vicar General without a special mandate, can it be permitted that a marriage of conscience be entered, that is, that marriage be celebrated with the denunciations omitted and secretly, according to the norm of the canons which follow.

Permission for the celebration of a marriage of conscience carries with itself the promise and grave obligation of observing secrecy on the part of the assisting priest, the witnesses, the Ordinary and his successors, and also of the other spouse when the other does not consent to disclosure.

The obligation of this promise on the part of the Ordinary does not extend to a case in which either some scandal or grave injury toward the sanctity of marriage threatens from the observance of secrecy, or the parents do not take care that children received from such a marriage be baptized, or they take care that they are to be baptized with false names expressed, without meanwhile providing to the Ordinary within thirty days notice of the offspring received and baptized with a sincere indication of the parents, or they neglect the Christian education of the children.

A marriage of conscience is not to be noted in the customary book of marriages and of the baptized, but in a special book to be preserved in the secret archive of the Curia, of which in can. 379.