Section — Noldin, Summa of Moral Theology
Section 12. Spiritual Relationship.
602. Nature of the Impediment. 1. The impediment of spiritual relationship consists in this, that between persons who have contracted relationship from the conferral and reception of baptism, valid matrimony cannot be entered.
Spiritual relationship is the nearness of persons arising from spiritual regeneration in the sacrament of baptism. Since spiritual regeneration has a likeness with natural generation, those who have parts in it, the minister and sponsor, are considered as spiritual parents, to whom reverence is owed by spiritual children. But if spiritual relationship were a diriment impediment by natural law, reverence owed to spiritual parents would dirimently impede matrimony, as reverence owed to consanguineous persons dirimently impedes it.
- This impediment is of merely ecclesiastical law: for it cannot be of natural law, because it arises from the conferral and reception of a sacrament; nor is it of divine law, because no argument of the divine will can be brought forward. Wherefore dispensation can be granted in this impediment, and indeed from any reasonable cause, since it is of lesser grade.
603. Declaration. 1. Only that spiritual relationship invalidates matrimony which intervenes:
a. between the baptized person and the baptizer;
b. between the baptized person and the sponsor.1
From confirmation indeed spiritual relationship arises, but no impediment of matrimony. The reason for this seems to be the following. Relationship arises because the sponsor, by force of relationship, must take care for the Christian education of his spiritual child. But since the confirmed person and the sponsor must be of the same sex, the relationship intervening between them does not have an effect invalidating matrimony.
a. Spiritual relationship, which by the old law was extended much more widely, was restricted by the Council of Trent2 and by the new Code is confined even more, so that it intervenes only a. between the baptized person and the baptizer; b. between the baptized person and the sponsor.
b. Spiritual relationship arises from solemn and private baptism.3
- In order that spiritual relationship arise, it is required that the sacrament be conferred validly, and on the part of the sponsor, that he or she acted as sponsor validly, although illicitly.
a. One who exercises the office of sponsor through a proxy contracts the relationship himself, not the proxy.4
b. If an infidel baptizes the child of a faithful man, he himself does not contract spiritual relationship, because the infidel is incapable of it. But relationship cannot arise from one side only, since it is a relation which by its nature is between two. Hence if a civil sponsor receives baptism, no spiritual relationship exists.
Multiple spiritual relationship, which formerly could intervene in some cases, now scarcely ever exists. The one case which could be imagined is this: namely, if the same person were the baptizer and the sponsor, who exercised the office of sponsor through a proxy, a double spiritual relationship would be present between the baptized person and the baptizer. It was long ago declared that spiritual relationship is not multiplied if someone holds several children of the same parents in the same sacrament.5
If baptism is repeated under condition, spiritual relationship is not contracted unless the same sponsor was employed in each baptism. Therefore neither the sponsor who was present at the former nor the sponsor who was present at the later baptism contracts it.6
1 Cn. 1079 and Cn. 768.
2 Sess. 24, c. 2, De reform. matr.
3 Cf. Cn. 762, 2.
4 S. C. C., June 11, 1881.
5 Lacroix, l. 6, pr. 1, 368 s. Sanchez, l. 7, disp. 60.
6 S. Office, April 29, 1894. Cn. 763, 2.