Section — Noldin, Summa of Moral Theology
Section 2. Effects with Regard to Children.
640. 1. Legitimacy. Which children are legitimate. Children conceived or born from a valid or putative matrimony are legitimate.1
a. Children born from a valid matrimony are not judged legitimate if the use of that matrimony was prohibited to the parents at the time of conception because of solemn religious profession or sacred order received. This disposition was made by the Church as a penalty for this crime: for by natural and civil law children of this sort are legitimate.
b. For solving the doubt whether offspring was born from legitimate conjugal commerce, the principle of Roman law adopted by the Church is applied: the father is he whom just nuptials show. Hence children born from a wife are presumed to have the husband as father until the contrary is proved by evident arguments.2 Wherefore children are presumed legitimate who were born at least after six months from the day of the celebrated matrimony, or within ten months from the day of dissolved conjugal life.3 These limits were constituted with account taken of the extreme limits between which, as experience testifies, birth and conception can be distant from each other.
1 Cn. 1114.
2 Cn. 1115, 1.
3 Cn. 1115, 2.
641. 2. Legitimation. Through subsequent matrimony, a. whether true or putative, whether newly contracted or convalidated, even if not consummated (as if it is contracted at the point of death), all natural children (but not spurious children) are legitimated, b. provided the parents were capable of contracting matrimony between themselves at the time of the conception or pregnancy or birth of the children.1
a. Children born outside matrimony from persons between whom, at the time of conception or pregnancy or birth, matrimony could have been made are called natural; others are called spurious, who are either adulterine or incestuous.
b. Legitimation follows contracted matrimony from the very disposition of law, without the consent of the parents or any other positive act.
- Children legitimated through subsequent matrimony, with regard to canonical effects, are equated in all things to legitimate children, unless something else has been expressly provided.2
Therefore they are not irregular, so that without dispensation they can be promoted to sacred orders and other ecclesiastical dignities. But by law it has been expressly provided that they remain incapable of the cardinalate, episcopate, abbacy, or prelature nullius.
1 Cn. 1116.
2 Cn. 1117.