Article — Merkelbach, Pastoral Questions
Article XII: Spiritual Kinship
- I. Notion.
It is the propinquity of persons arising from the reception of baptism or confirmation.
- II. Scope of the impediment.
a) In the new law only spiritual kinship arising from baptism received constitutes an impediment of matrimony.
- III. Conditions required for producing the impediment.
a) On the part of baptism: it must be valid. But even from private baptism the impediment is begotten, since the law does not distinguish.
b) on the part of the minister: he himself must be baptized.
c) on the part of the sponsor (or sponsress): it is required that he or she fulfill all the conditions which can. 765 requires for undertaking that office validly.
- IV. By what law that impediment exists.
a) It is of merely ecclesiastical law.
b) Consequently it is contracted only by the baptized.
- V. Multiplication of the impediment.
It is never multiplied, unless the minister is at the same time, through himself or through a procurator, the sponsor.
- VI. Dispensation.
It is the only means of removing that impediment, which is of the lesser grade. (Can. 1042.)1
1 Cfr. above n. 97.
- VII. Law before the Code.
a) Not only baptism but also confirmation generated a diriment impediment.
b) The impediment was in force:
- Between the minister and the subject of the sacrament.
- Between the sponsor (or sponsress) and the subject.
- Between the sponsor (or sponsress) and the parents of the subject.
- Between the minister and the parents of the subject.