Article V. On the Convalidation of a Matrimony Invalidly Contracted

875. Preliminary note. When some contracted matrimony is discovered to be certainly null because of an existing diriment impediment, both the parish priest and the confessor must proceed with great circumspection. There are four ways of proceeding:

1. Separation of the spouses. This separation must be required if an indispensable impediment, for example, the bond, stands opposed to the matrimony, and there is no well-founded hope that the spouses can live together as brother and sister and that public scandal can be avoided. Apart from this case it is rarely expedient to procure the separation of spouses living in an invalid matrimony. For many inconveniences are wont to arise from such a separation, both for the spouses themselves and for offspring perhaps born.

Before the pseudo-spouses are separated, a matrimonial process is ordinarily required, concerning which see our Manual of Canon Law, q. 537 ff. A juridical process is not necessary if the matrimony is invalid a) because of the seven impediments enumerated in can. 1990; b) because of the former impediment of clandestinity.²⁹⁷ But it belongs neither to parish priests nor, a fortiori, to confessors, but to the local Ordinary, to pronounce the nullity of such marriages.

2. To leave the putative spouses in good faith. This method is not licit unless a) both spouses are truly in good faith and there exists a well-founded hope that this good faith will remain perpetually; b) there is an urgent cause for permitting material sins. Such an urgent cause is, for example, a grave danger that the putative spouses, after learning of the nullity of the matrimony, may nevertheless continue to live together maritally and thus remain in perpetual formal concubinage, with harm to themselves, harm to the offspring, and the greatest scandal of the people.

3. Fraternal cohabitation. Fraternal cohabitation can be permitted to putative spouses if the nullity of the matrimony is occult, so that no scandal arises from their living together, and then if their age or virtue is such that there is no proximate danger of incontinence. This absence of the danger of incontinence cannot be known with certainty except through long experience.

4. Convalidation of the invalid matrimony. An invalid matrimony can be convalidated in three ways: 1. by a simple renewal of consent without a dispensation; 2. by a simple dispensation from competent authority; 3. by a radical sanation. Each must be treated individually.

²⁹⁷ Pontifical Commission, October 16, 1919 (Acta Apost. Sed. XI, 479).