Thesis XXXII

The Church alone can posit impediments diriment of Christian marriage; that is, the civil power has no right innate to itself of establishing diriment impediments which affect the very bond of Christian marriage.

I. We are speaking of those impediments which prohibit the bond from existing. When there is discourse about the right of the civil power, the right is understood which is proper to it, flowing from its nature. We prove first that the matter is so, namely that the Church alone has this right. Pius VI proposed the Catholic doctrine in the Brief of September 16, 1788, to the Bishop of Motula, who, after receiving from the king a delegation in the grade of appeal from the judgment of the Neapolitan Bishop in a matrimonial cause, had issued a sentence and had declared that the laws of the Church and of the Holy See would have had no force unless, "after the Gregorian Code had spread through all the provinces of the Catholic world, the civil authority had been added, by only the tacit consent of the supreme powers, whose office it was to make laws concerning nuptials." The principal scope of the Brief is instruction in doctrine. "Receive now, Venerable Brother, the paternal voice of him who, as you know well, since by divine mercy he sits in the Chair of Peter, has the right conferred by the supreme authority of Christ Himself of teaching and confirming; for we are disposed in mind in such a way that we wish both to deal with you lovingly and kindly to admonish you, that you may recognize the error into which you have miserably fallen, and may bring your mind as soon as possible to correct it." Moreover he speaks thus: "It is a dogma of faith that marriage, which before the coming of Christ was nothing other than a certain indissoluble contract, after the coming of Christ became one of the seven Sacraments of the Evangelical law... Hence it comes about that to the Church alone, to whom the whole care of the Sacraments has been entrusted, there belongs every right and power of assigning her own form to this contract elevated to the higher dignity of a Sacrament, and therefore of passing sentence concerning the validity or invalidity of marriages"; and this indeed he confirms by the authority of canon 12 of Trent, whose words he teaches must be interpreted so that "it comprehends and embraces all causes,... and that all these must belong uniquely to ecclesiastical judges." Then he says: "This right (namely of making laws concerning nuptials), as far as the Catholic world extends, resides whole in the Church alone." Then, indicating to him the penalties to which he had made himself liable, he appeals first to canon 12 of Trent, "by which all those are subjected to anathema who deny that matrimonial causes pertain to the Church and to ecclesiastical judges; by which canon it is certain that not only those are comprehended who teach that making laws concerning nuptials belongs to the supreme powers of this age, but also those who confirm this very thing by deeds, and who obtain authority from the lay power, and who define causes of the nullity of marriage as royal delegates." Wherefore the declaration of this truth pertains to the substance of the Pontifical Brief, whether when it teaches or when it then decrees penalties. But Pius VIII, in the Encyclical Traditi humilitati to all Patriarchs, Primates, etc., May 21, 1829, commands that the Christian people be carefully taught "that marriage must be ruled not only by human law but also by divine law, and that it must be numbered not among earthly but among sacred things, and therefore must be wholly subject to the Church." Whether the context is considered (that it is a sacred thing, wholly subject to the Church), or the doctrine of Pius VI is compared, it is clear that the former words of Pius VIII yield only this sense: that Christian marriage must be ruled by that law which is not only human but also divine, of which sort the ecclesiastical law alone is. Therefore the Roman Pontiffs have proposed their opinion openly enough, functioning in the office of Doctor and Pastor of all Christians; for Pius VI speaks from the right of teaching and confirming conferred on him in Peter by Christ, which is the right of primacy, the right of universal magisterium. This right, indeed, need not be exercised toward all at once, but can and must also be exercised toward individuals, namely, those must be confirmed who need confirmation; nor does the authority of this magisterium depend on those to whom it is addressed, but on the person, or the dignity of the person, from whom it proceeds. Moreover he hands down doctrine of faith as intimately connected with the definition of the Council of Trent, which he authentically interprets. But although the same Pius VI, a few years earlier, that is, in 1780, in a letter to the Archbishop of Mechlin, had said that he did not condemn absolutely those Catholic Doctors who had asserted that the prince can add impediments for rendering ineffective and taking away matter apt for the sacrament, nevertheless this does not prevent him from afterward proposing Catholic doctrine by the authority of his Apostolic magisterium. But this doctrine, so expressly proposed by the Holy See, is evidently proved.

II. Indeed 1. The Tridentine canon is canon 12 of Session XXIV: "If anyone shall say that matrimonial causes do not belong to ecclesiastical judges: let him be anathema." Moreover a) the legitimate interpretation of this Canon is that all matrimonial causes are comprehended and that all these belong to ecclesiastical judges alone. For first, that is the authentic interpretation of the supreme legislator; for Pius VI established that it is to be so interpreted in the cited Brief. Then it is proved by reason. And indeed it is clear that all causes are comprehended. For that indefinite expression "matrimonial causes" in the words "if anyone shall say that matrimonial causes," etc.,¹ can be explained in one of these ways: namely, either "if anyone shall say that some cause does not belong," etc., or "if anyone shall say that all causes do not belong," etc., or "if anyone shall say that not all causes belong," etc. But if you take it in the first way, then the truth of the contradictory is consequent, that is, all causes do belong. If in the second way, then this proposition is false: "all matrimonial causes do not belong to ecclesiastical judges"; but now its contradictory is: "some cause does belong," etc.; and its contrary is: "all causes do belong." Which, then, would have to be judged defined? Only the contradictory? But what is this "some cause"? And since this is unknown, what would this canon be worth for practice? Then, are legislators accustomed to speak in this way, when they wish to vindicate to themselves alone the arbitration of some matter, so that they use indefinite terms? Therefore, even in this second hypothesis, that proposition would have to be said to have been established: "all causes belong," etc. If you take it in the third way, the proposition "not all causes belong" is condemned, whose contradictory is: "all causes belong." Therefore in reality "the words of the canon are so general that they comprehend all causes" (Pius VI, loc. cit.). Besides, the reason why these causes belong to the Church is, according to the mind of the Council, with Pius VI as interpreter, because marriage is a sacrament, and no other reason can be assigned; but this reason applies to all causes; therefore. But if all causes belong to ecclesiastical judges, then they belong uniquely to them. For if at least some causes belonged also to the tribunal of the Prince, these would belong either independently of the Church or dependently. If the first, either it would be false that all belong to the Church, or the absurdity would be had that two supreme powers, in the same matter and concerning the same subjects, possess the same right; concerning which hypothesis also below. If the second, then this is not the hypothesis of the adversaries, and then it would always be true that those causes belong to ecclesiastical judges alone, since all power would be derived from them. Now truly b) from this it follows that the power of positing diriment impediments of Christian marriage is by native right in the possession of the Church alone. For the power which takes cognizance of causes of contracts and which prescribes a form to the same is the same power, the power of the supreme Legislator in a society, which is one. Therefore.

¹ Note that an indefinite proposition of itself is equivalent to a universal proposition.

2. The Tridentine decree On the Reform of Marriage says: "It is not to be doubted that clandestine marriages made by the free consent of the contracting parties are valid and true marriages so long as the Church has not made them invalid, and therefore those are rightly to be condemned, as the Holy Synod condemns them with anathema, who deny that they are true and valid." Here the matter concerns right: marriages are valid if the Church does not invalidate them. It concerns truth, for those who deny it are condemned. Therefore a dogma of Faith is established. But this was always and everywhere true, and will be true, and can never be false. But it could be false if the power of establishing diriment impediments also belonged to princes; for when these were established by them, the marriage would be neither true nor valid, although the Church had not invalidated it.

3. If a proper right of establishing impediments for marriages of Christian subjects belongs to the civil power, that right is independent, just as the civil power itself is independent - independent, I say, in its own order - so that for Christian marriage, insofar as it is, as they say, a civil contract, the civil power could independently establish impediments, just as the Church can independently constitute impediments for the same marriage insofar as it is a Sacrament. Therefore we would have a twofold independent power concerning the same thing, indeed under a different respect, yet in such a way that numerically the same reality would be equally subject to each power. But now it is repugnant that, for the same subject men, the same contract should be subject to two diverse independent powers; but Christian marriage is certainly subject to the independent authority of the Church; therefore it cannot equally be subject to the civil power. Indeed, if each power, ecclesiastical and civil, can establish the form for the validity of the act, each will be able to hold as valid what the other invalidates, and to invalidate what the other holds as valid. Namely, for the same men the same thing will at once be licit and not licit, valid and not valid, than which nothing is more absurd in a society. Nor must recourse be had to some pact which the two powers enter into amicably; for either this pact is necessary, so that both powers are bound to enter into it, or it is not necessary. If it is not necessary, it is supposed in vain, both because it certainly can fail to exist, and because it can always follow from the natures of things that the same thing for the same persons, once that pact has been posited, is at once licit and illicit. But if that pact is necessary, because in this hypothesis one power would need the concurrence of the other, neither would be an independent power in its own order concerning that same object, as certainly the Church is, as we have proved (Thesis XXX), and as the adversaries contend concerning the civil power. Therefore, if the civil power has an independent right of establishing impediments for the validity of the conjugal contract, this will follow from the natures of things: that nothing is certain in society, that subjects are ruled by contradictory laws, that is, that there is no law and no power. And indeed from the Bull Auctorem fidei, n. 60, it is clear that the opinion "which attributes to the civil power the right either of abolishing or of restricting impediments constituted or approved by the authority of the Church" is "subversive of the liberty and power of the Church, contrary to Trent, proceeding from the heretical principle condemned above" (that the Church cannot by proper right constitute diriment impediments). But if the prince has an independent power of establishing diriment impediments, in reality he can abolish impediments established by the Church; for he can prescribe a form for the validity of the act and establish that form which the Church has invalidated; and once this is posited, the impediment established by the Church would be null. Therefore, together with the proper power of the Church, there cannot at the same time be the proper power of the civil principate.

III. A certain learned man says that it is affirmed by many theologians that the same thing cannot be subject to a twofold independent power, but that this has not been proved, nor ever will be proved. To him one may reply that this indeed is affirmed by him, but without any reason, indeed against every reason. For the matter concerns two social powers which regard numerically the same thing for the same subject persons. But in this hypothesis of a twofold independent power it is evident that the subject can be bound by each power at once by two contradictory laws, and therefore be bound and not bound; that the same action of his can be at once good and evil, valid and invalid; which all will certainly grant to be repugnant. Therefore.

You will ask: could not this hypothesis be possible, namely that the civil power has a proper right of establishing impediments of the marriage of Christian subjects, yet the right is subordinated to the authority of the Church, in the same way as the right of coercing the wicked by bodily penalties, which properly belongs to the civil power (though not to it alone), whose exercise the Church can command in her own favor?

I answer that this hypothesis cannot be possible. For this other right of the civil power is subject to the power of the Church only indirectly; hence it can be exercised without the consent of the Church, and it has its own proper matter, which does not pertain to the Church. But that right of establishing impediments of Christian marriage could certainly never be exercised without the consent of the Church, nor would it have any proper matter which does not pertain to the Church, since the matrimonial contract of Christians is a sacrament.

IV. Wherefore the Church has never approved this power in princes, and she has judged that civil laws constituting impediments diriment of the bond have no value, as Benedict XIV testifies in the letters to the Cardinal of York; and Urban VIII (cf. the place cited below) and Pius VII (in letters given to Napoleon on June 27, 1805) showed the same in the question of a marriage entered without the consent of parents, which the civil law was said to require; and Gregory the Great did likewise, who reproved marriages of cousins permitted by earthly law. Besides, from the historical monuments brought forward in Thesis XXIX it is established that, in matrimonial causes of Emperors or Kings, when the matter concerned impediments also established by positive law, they claimed no authority for themselves, but the Church asserted all authority for herself, both in dispensing from laws and in passing sentences. But this could not have happened if it once had been believed that the power, and an independent power, of establishing impediments was in the possession even of secular princes.

V. But the intrinsic reason of this matter is that which Pius VI teaches in the place cited: "These matrimonial causes pertain to the judgment of the Church alone for no other reason than because the matrimonial contract is truly and properly one of the seven Sacraments of the Evangelical law." This reason indeed must be polished a little.

Therefore the supreme civil power is independent in its own order; but its order is the natural order. If the worship of God and religion were natural, the civil power would extend itself to it, and the same man would be king and pontiff. But by the divine institution of the supernatural order and of the ecclesiastical priestly order, to which has been committed the ordering of men to the supernatural end and the care of supernatural and sacred things, it has been brought about by divine right that the things which pertain to religion and the worship of God in Christian society are wholly withdrawn from the power of kings or princes and pertain to the power of the Church; while upon princes there rests the charge and office of obeying the Church, of defending ecclesiastical laws and urging their execution by restraining the contumacious. Nor has any injury been inflicted upon Christian princes if the rights over sacred things have been taken from them; for God is the one who has so disposed, and the character of an intrinsically supernatural and universal economy demanded it. Wherefore, this economy having been established, the order in which the civil power is engaged, insofar as it is an independent ruling power, is only the natural order; or it can be engaged only concerning those things which are purely natural. For those things of nature which are also supernatural, especially if they are intrinsically and essentially such, by divine right pertain to the power of the Church, to whom surely all the rights of supernatural things have been committed; but supernatural things are nothing other than things of nature intrinsically elevated to a higher order (cf. Praenotiones, n. II), namely, to the divine order.

For this reason, civil power in the society of Christians cannot by a proper independent right extend to everything which is useful to society; for what is more useful to society than religion, the worship of God, Faith, the Sacraments, the Sacrifice? But it can extend to that which is useful and is natural; for God has committed the rest, according to His own judgment, to better and holier administrators. Indeed, neither can the same power by a proper independent right extend to everything which is necessary for society; for what is more necessary to it than religion? Yet whatever pertains to religion in Christian society is subject to the power of the Church.

Namely, it must be observed that men existing in civil society are immediately ordered to some temporal happiness; and the same are ordered to another happiness in another life, which happiness, compared with the former, has the character of an end, and is, in the present order of providence, intrinsically supernatural. Under the former respect men are simply citizens; under the latter they are religious. But religion, or the worship of God, by which men are ordered to the last end, which is God, indeed contributes very greatly also to temporal happiness, but not as a pure means subordinated to it, rather as an excellent cause from which this effect also is naturally born; and the same religion is necessary for civil society, because unless men are rightly ordered to God, they will not be able to be rightly coordinated with themselves; for perversion from the end also removes order concerning the means. But if the last end of man, and therefore also religion, were purely natural, since there would be no one else instituted by God among men to rule the worship of God, and the rule of natural worship of this kind would not exceed the force of the supreme civil power, yet there would have to be someone who would rule social worship; religious authority also would belong to the civil power, and the same man would be king and pontiff. Nevertheless even in this hypothesis it is necessary to employ a certain distinction, which not a few undeservedly pass over. It would indeed be necessary that there exist someone furnished with religious power; but it would not be necessary that this power be committed by society to the same one to whom the civil power had been entrusted. But even if one man were at the same time king and pontiff, nevertheless these two powers would still be formally distinguished, so that the things which he decreed for the good of religion would not proceed from him insofar as he is king, but insofar as he is pontiff. This distinction indeed is not useless; for it signifies that the exercise of religious power is not some function of the civil power to which it is subordinated, which indeed is repugnant; for even in the order of nature the good of religion and of divine worship ought to stand as an end toward the civil good. And therefore in this hypothesis the authority of the pontiff existing in one subject together with the power of the king would subordinate this latter to itself and would demand that the ordering of the civil state be referred to the good of religion, not conversely religion to the civil good.

Therefore, with a supernatural religious society instituted by God, and that a perfect one, it has been brought about that men, insofar as they are ordered to the supernatural end and in all those things by which they are ordered to it, namely in all things which pertain to religion, in all sacred and supernatural things, depend on the power of the Church alone. Wherefore the power of Princes in Christian society is no longer a religious power, but purely civil, ordering citizens to the happiness of this life; and because this end is essentially subordinated to the last end of men, which the Church regards, the civil power itself also is necessarily subordinated to the power of the Church. Therefore, although religion is necessary for civil society even as regards temporal happiness, nevertheless, because it is not a pure means subordinated to it, but something more excellent in itself, it is not necessary that it be subject to the civil power, whose proper end is the temporal happiness of subjects; and if religion is supernatural, it cannot be subject to the same power. It will indeed be necessary that religion be in society; but it is one thing for religion to be in society, another for it to depend on the civil power; for it can depend on the religious power separately instituted by God. But from the necessity of true religion for civil society it will follow that secular Princes ought to procure, as much as is in them, that true Religion thrive and flourish in their society, and to revere and protect the laws of the true Church divinely instituted. Therefore it is simply false that everything which is useful and necessary to society even for the proper end of temporal good must be subject to civil power. But Christian princes indeed enjoy a certain dependent and subordinated right, or the right of bringing it about that subjects obey the religious power, so that civil society too may be well disposed; but this is rather the office of defense and protection against irreligious men, and is not the right about which we are disputing.

Now, if the relation of marriage to society, both civil and religious, is considered, it is manifest 1. that marriage is not essentially ordered to the proper good of civil society; for it both can exist without it, and its primary end is the existence of one who worships God; but the worship of God is the proper good of religious society; 2. that it is indeed essentially ordered to the good which is proper to religious society, because a good of this kind is the primary end of marriage.

VI. These things posited, behold the process of our demonstration. I say 1. that a contract elevated to the dignity of a sacrament is a natural contract; namely, for it to be a sacrament, only two things are required: a contract posited by the force of nature, and a form established by the Church for the validity of the act. We therefore deny that a contract elevated to the dignity of a sacrament is a civil contract, which indeed was wrongly supposed formerly by not a few and is still supposed now. That is called a civil contract which has validity in society from the civil power. We prove together both things which we have affirmed and denied. a) Christ elevated to the dignity of a sacrament that contract whose administration He committed by His own right to the Church; but this is a natural contract. The minor is proved. The contract whose administration the Church has by proper right is that which an invalidating law of the Church touches; but this is a natural contract; therefore. The minor is proved thus. If the power of constituting the form of the contract for the validity of the act and of invalidating belonged to the civil authority, then that which this power would touch would be purely the contract posited by the force of nature, which by reason of the form established by civil right would become valid or invalid, just as it is in other contracts. But the power of the Church is the same and acts in the same way as that which would be supposed to be in the prince, because it is independent; for this power belongs to the Church by proper right. Therefore the contract which the Church touches, which the form established by her makes valid or invalid, is a natural contract; therefore. b) Christ elevated to the dignity of a Sacrament that contract concerning which He pronounced: "what God has joined, let not man separate"; but this is the contract concerning which Adam spoke; and Adam spoke of the natural contract, for he spoke of that which God, the author of nature, instituted, and which even precedes every civil society; therefore.

I say 2. Christ did not determine that every natural consent of two persons is efficacious, nor did He determine concerning all persons which are capable and which incapable; but He left this to another, that is, to the Church, to be determined (unless nature itself, and through it the author of nature, has already determined it). This is clear a) because this universal determination of Christ exists nowhere; it is clear b) from the power given to the Church of assigning a form for the validity of the contract; for since this power is borne upon the natural contract (the preceding number), it is necessary that, antecedently to the law of the Church, nothing in those things concerning which the Church exercises her power has been determinately established by Christ; for against this the Church could do nothing.

I say 3. The dignity of the sacrament does not prevent the Church from being able to establish a form for the validity of the Christian matrimonial contract and to place diriment impediments upon it. For the Church, apart from the forms and matters of the sacraments which she cannot change, can establish all those things which she judges to conduce to the honorable and holy administration of the same. But the matter of the sacrament is a valid or efficacious contract; wherefore, when the Church establishes a form for the validity of the act, she does not change the matter, but posits the conditions by which the matter itself exists. But it is especially useful and necessary that in Christian society there be some form, proposed by positive law, of contracting marriages; therefore.

I say 4. The dignity of the sacrament wholly forbids that the civil power should have the right of constituting the form for the validity of the contract. The discourse concerns a native right, which would proceed from the very nature of the civil power and therefore would be proper to the prince because he has supreme civil authority. Indeed the valid matrimonial contract among Christians is a sacrament, and if it is not a sacrament, neither is it a valid contract (Thesis X); wherefore the valid contract of Christians is intrinsically and essentially supernatural (ibid.). Now a twofold power over a Sacrament can be conceived. The first is a power, so to speak, of dominion, which establishes the sacramental rite, matter, and form, granting to them the efficacious power of grace. The other is the power of administration, which in turn can be distinguished as twofold. The first is that which decrees the manner in which the Sacrament is made licitly and holily; the second is that which establishes the form on which it depends whether that which can be the matter and form of the Sacrament, when it is actually employed, is or is not the proximate matter and form of the Sacrament, and which determines who are suitable ministers and who are unsuitable ministers of the Sacrament. This too is a power of administration over the Sacrament. For 1. it is certainly a power greater than the preceding; 2. he who can posit a law on which it depends whether the ministers of the Sacrament, while they act, do or do not posit the proximate matter and form of the Sacrament, who can determine suitable ministers and exclude others as unsuitable, surely rules the administration of the Sacrament; and therefore his power is a power of administration. But each power of administration belongs to no one except him to whom the care of the Sacraments has been entrusted, to whom the right over Christian sacred things belongs, in whom there is the power of directing men through the Sacraments and the other supernatural means to the supernatural end; but this is the Church alone. But the power of invalidating, or of constituting the form for the validity of the matrimonial contract of Christians, is such a power of administration over a sacrament; for 1. it determines persons capable and incapable of contracting, and since the contract is the sacrament itself, the determination of who are suitable ministers of the sacrament and who are unfit depends on it; 2. on it depends, not indeed efficiently and immediately, but insofar as it antecedently posits conditions that the contract be valid, whether the mutual consent of two persons, which can be valid and can be the matter and form of the Sacrament, when it is actually posited, is or is not valid consent; and because valid consent is intrinsically and essentially the very matter and form of the Sacrament, it depends on this power whether it is or is not the proximate matter and form of the Sacrament.

Wherefore this power differs wholly from that by which anyone can produce or destroy the remote matters of the sacraments; for here the matter is not the remote matter but the proximate matter of the Sacrament, of which sort valid consent is. Yet this proximate matter of the Sacrament, in order to be such, depends also on that power which establishes the conditions according to which the contracting parties contract validly and therefore posit the proximate matter of the Sacrament. Indeed, remote matter exists outside the use of the Sacrament; but by the use itself, when the sacrament is administered, it becomes proximate matter. For this reason he who posits conditions for the matter itself, while it is actually employed, touches not remote matter but proximate matter, and therefore touches something sacred; but he who touches only remote matter touches nothing except something profane, as water is. But the power of establishing impediments touches the proximate matter of the Sacrament. For it touches the very consent which is posited, and which is the proximate matter of the Sacrament, and the very minister of the sacrament while he posits the matter and form. For the form established for the validity of the matrimonial contract tends to this: that the very consent by which the contract and the sacrament actually come to be should be valid, and that the contracting parties themselves, while they actually contract, contract validly, that is, that they be suitable ministers. Namely, this power does not tend to make something suitable so that it can be applied to the use of the sacrament, but it affects that which is applied in the very act of the sacrament; and therefore it truly touches not the remote matter but the proximate. Therefore, just as the prince has no power over the very administration of the water by which baptism is made, that is, over the sacramental ablution, so there can be no power over matrimonial consent and the ministers of marriage.

And so the power of destroying or positing remote matter is not a power of administration, since it in no way affects the ministers of the sacrament or their ministerial operation; but the power of establishing impediments of marriage affects both; therefore.

Hence I say 5. It is repugnant to the dignity of the Sacrament that a civil contract as such be the matter of it. A civil contract is that which has validity in society from the civil power. Now if the matter of the sacrament is the contract insofar as it has validity from the civil power, the matrimonial contract, in order to be valid, depends on the civil power. But if the validity of the contract depends on the civil power, then a power of administration over the sacrament already belongs to the civil authority, as we proved in the preceding number. Therefore.

Nor, what is equivalent, can the civil power directly invalidate the natural contract, so as in this way to withdraw matter from the Sacrament. For if it can invalidate, it can also provide validity; hence this power is the same as the preceding. And indeed the natural contract is that upon which the power of the Church is borne, and which, conformed to the form prescribed by her, is a sacrament. Therefore, if the prince could invalidate this contract, he could also make it valid for Christians; but the valid natural contract of Christians is a Sacrament. Therefore the repugnance stated above returns. And in very truth, either this invalidation, or more generally this constitution of the form for the validity of the act, is valid even against the will of the Church, or it is not. If it is not valid, what does it accomplish, when the Church has prescribed the form and has established that all marriages are valid which have not been made contrary to her invalidating laws? If it is valid, therefore the prince alone determines the valid contract, posits diriment impediments, and rules the administration of the Sacrament, which is absurd.

I say therefore 6. Christians contracting marriage, although they are citizens, do not contract as citizens, but as Christians. For those do not contract as citizens who in contracting are not subject to the civil power, who by contracting minister and receive a sacrament which in no way pertains to civil society, although that which they do can also contribute to the good of civil society.

I say finally 7. All matrimonial causes belong to the tribunal of the Church alone. Matrimonial causes are those in which there is dispute about the bond of marriage, or about those things which depend on the validity of the matrimonial bond, of which sort are the separation of spouses and legitimate offspring, or about those things which dispose toward the bond itself, of which sort are espousals, the determination of which therefore depends on the character of the term to which they are referred.

Now in the demonstration of this thesis we brought forward canon 12 of Trent, drawing an argument from it as from a principle of faith; but the thesis has not been proved by that reason alone. Therefore, with the truth of the Thesis posited, we now prove that which we established in the last place by a theological argument. For judgment in these causes belongs to him who has the power of decreeing when the bond does or does not exist, and who has the power of decreeing how the sacrament must be received rightly; but this belongs to the power of the Church alone, which can prescribe a form for the valid contract from which the bond exists, and which can establish those things which are required for the holy administration and reception of the sacrament. Cf. the Bull Auctorem fidei, prop. 58, in which a clear reason for this matter also is given, which is as follows: "The proposition which establishes that espousals properly so called contain a merely civil act, which disposes toward the celebrating of marriage, and that the same are wholly subject to the prescription of civil laws: as if an act disposing toward a sacrament were not, under this respect, subject to the right of the Church: false, injurious to the right of the Church as regards effects flowing even from espousals by force of canonical sanctions, derogating from discipline constituted by the Church."

Corollary. Therefore Princes cannot posit impediments diriment of the bond of Christians, not because the Church has reserved to herself the use of this power, but because of an intrinsic defect of power. Therefore neither can an infidel prince posit impediments for the marriages of Christian subjects.

VII. The things which we have said concerning the civil power are valid for any lay power; wherefore neither can parents by their own authority invalidate the marriages of their children (Decree on the Reform of Marriage, c. 1), since they have no right over the sacrament, nor can a civil law prescribing their consent have invalidating force. Note the words of Paul, 1 Cor. VII. 36, 37, "concerning his virgin," "to keep his virgin"; this does not signify a virgin daughter, but virgin flesh, and therefore "his virgin" is one's own flesh, which one, having power over his own will, can join to another through marriage or keep untouched. Thus Jerome, Against Jovinian, book I, and most expressly St. Gaudentius, On the Reading of the Gospel, tract I, adding also the reason why it must be so taken, because parents cannot rule over the decision of another's will; nor does Epiphanius, Against Heresies, heresy LXI, n. 5, contradict this interpretation, which he mentions; Nicetas of Aquileia, To a Fallen Virgin, n. 48, hints at the same interpretation.

It has indeed been doubted by some whether formerly, by the law of the Church, a marriage was invalid to which the legitimate consent of parents was lacking. But I do not know why chapter 3 of the response of Nicholas I to the Bulgarians has been brought forward to prove this, where, reviewing those things which pertain to espousals, which are promised covenants of future nuptials, he says that these are celebrated by the consent of those who contract them and of those in whose power they are. For the same Nicholas in the same chapter warns the Bulgarians that not every omission of those things which he himself reviewed is a sin, as the Greeks teach, and he adds: "and for this reason, according to the laws, only the consent of those whose union is in question should suffice" (that is, for marriage). Therefore in the advanced ninth century this consent of parents was not required by the law of the Church for the validity of marriage. Therefore an appeal is made in vain, to prove the same thing, to the Capitularies of Charlemagne, which were published a little before Nicholas. But the canon of the Fourth Synod of Orleans, held in the year 541, could not bind the universal Church, nor is it sufficiently clear whether it is only prohibiting or also invalidating; nor does it speak universally, but it requires the consent of parents for a daughter, rejecting those who, relying on royal authority, wished to join girls to themselves while the parents dissented. "Let no one," say the Fathers, "dare by the command of power to seek the daughter of another, lest the marriage which is impiously joined against the will of the parents be judged as a captivity; but just as it is prohibited, let it not be admitted. Upon those who have perpetrated such things, let the severity of excommunication be imposed according to the measure of the crime." It seems to be a certain case of abduction. But the chapter Videtur, Who Can Accuse a Marriage, does nothing to the matter.

The difficulties of some moment drawn from the natures of things must be judged solved from the whole theory handed down thus far concerning the character of contract and sacrament, and from the propositions established here and their proofs; nevertheless, those in which the adversaries especially trust, we shall now purposely dispatch.