§ 11. Fitness for Marriage and Generation

54. - Puberty in the man signifies the production of nemaspermata in the testicles. These testicles at the same time produce the element essential to fecundity, or sperm strictly understood, and possess an internal secretion whose fluid, mingled with the blood, fosters sexual appetite; and, as we have seen, induces the secondary marks of virility: beard, pubic hair, and changed voice.

In the woman, puberty is had from the time of ovulation, which is customarily revealed by menstrual flow, occurring almost every 28 days and following the discharge of a mature ovule.

55. Yet a man is not fully mature for marriage, nor is a woman to be judged fully marriageable, before they have fully matured, or have perfectly attained strength.

It is therefore desirable of itself that, in our regions, a daughter not marry unless she has passed the twentieth year of age, and a son unless he has passed the twenty-third year.

Hence the Code of Canon Law also wisely distinguishes, in canon 88, the age at which someone is deemed pubescent, namely, the completed fourteenth year for males and the twelfth for females, from the age at which one can validly contract marriage. Canon 1067, moreover, requires the completed age of sixteen years in males and fourteen years in females for the validity of the nuptials themselves. As is evident, dispensations will frequently have to be granted in warmer regions, for example African ones, especially since the exception "unless malice shall have supplied the age" is no longer in force.

56. "In the woman," thus the Reverend Father Gemelli ¹, "ovulation ceases in the twenty-eighth or thirtieth year after puberty; at that time the ovaries and adjoining organs undergo the process of involution; the menstrual flow ceases, and thereafter the whole organism also is subjected to the process of involution."

¹ Non moechaberis, p. 20.

The age at which the woman is thus changed is customarily comprised between the forty-fifth and fiftieth year; and it is called critical because the woman then has dangers of health to overcome. Observe, however, that perfect degeneration of the ovaries, upon which conception becomes impossible, is not had until some years, from two to four, after the menstrual flow has ceased. In practice, scarcely any woman can conceive after completing fifty years of age. But the customary order of nature is that, at least a few years after the menstrual flow has been suppressed, the ovaries are deprived of their function.

The man, however, probably produces living nemaspermata up to sixty years of age. Thereafter the probability decreases, and at the age of eighty years it becomes minimal.

Compare Lawson, Tait, and Peuch, cited by Luciani, Fisiologia, vol. 2, p. 770; Mangiagalli, Ann. di ostetr. e ginecol., 1895.