Article — Merkelbach, Pastoral Questions
Article III: Concerning the Causes of Dispensation
- I. Necessity of a just cause for dispensing.
a) From an ecclesiastical law establishing an impediment of matrimony, let there be no dispensation without a just and reasonable cause, account being taken of the gravity of the law from which dispensation is made; otherwise the dispensation, by whomsoever granted, except the Holy See, is illicit and invalid. (Can. 84 § 1.)
b) "A dispensation, in doubt concerning the sufficiency of the cause, is licitly sought and can be licitly and validly granted." (ibid. § 2.)
- II. Division of the causes of dispensation.
a) Motive or final causes are called those which, taken singly or collectively, suffice of themselves for obtaining the dispensation.
Impulsive causes are those which, although insufficient of themselves, nevertheless dispose the superior to grant the dispensation more quickly or more easily.
In practice it is better to set forth all causes which are apt to incline the superior to granting the favor.
b) Causes which law or the style of the curia recognizes as final or motive are called canonical causes.
- III. List of canonical causes.
The Instruction of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide of the day 9 May 18751 enumerates sixteen canonical causes. They are:
1 Collectanea S. Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, II, n. 1470.
a) Narrowness of place, whether absolute, i.e., when in the place there are not more than 300 hearths or 1500 inhabitants and the place is distant more than 1500 meters from the nearest place; or relative, when the kinship of the woman in this place has been propagated so broadly that she cannot find another man of equal condition besides the one impeded.
b) Superadult age of the woman: i.e., if a virgin has completed the age of 24 years and does not find another spouse suitable for herself. If nevertheless she has reached her 40th year, this cause is no longer admitted as canonical.
c) Deficiency or incompetence of dowry, which namely prevents the woman from finding another man of equal condition besides the one impeded.
d) Lawsuits over succession of goods already arisen, or grave or imminent danger of the same: in this sense, that there is no one willing to assist the woman in this matter besides the man who desires to marry her.
e) Poverty of a widow burdened with numerous offspring, or who at the same time is younger and is found in danger of incontinence.
f) The good of peace, or grave enmities to be composed.
i) Infamy of the woman, from suspicion, even false, of evil familiarity with an affine or blood-relative.
j) Revalidation of a matrimony contracted in good faith and in the form of the Church.
l) Danger of a mixed matrimony or of one to be celebrated before a non-Catholic minister, with most grave scandal of the faithful and grave spiritual harm.
m) Danger of incestuous concubinage.
n) Danger of civil matrimony.
"Nevertheless, in this or similar cases, let dispensation not be granted with excessive facility on account of threats, with grave danger of spreading religious indifferentism."2
2 Vermeersch-Creusen, cited work, t. II, n. 318.
p) Removal of grave scandals.
q) Cessation of public concubinage.
r) Excellence of merits in a benefactor of the Church or one very well deserving concerning religion.
- IV. Non-canonical causes.
Such causes are usefully alleged as render matrimony with another person difficult.
- V. Truth of the causes which are alleged.
a) Generally it is required, even for the validity of the dispensation, that true motive causes be alleged.
b) Nevertheless, a dispensation is valid, notwithstanding the falsity of the cause adduced, in two cases:
- When the Holy See uses this or an equivalent formula in the concession: "from certain reasonable causes."
[Printed here after n. 197; the following two items evidently continue the canonical-cause list in n. 195.]
g) Excessive, suspect, dangerous familiarity, and also cohabitation under the same roof, which cannot easily be impeded.
h) Copula and pregnancy, and therefore legitimation of offspring. This cause is among the more urgent ones.