Article III. Impediments in Particular

The following are simply impeded:

I. Children of non-Catholics, so long as the parents remain in their error (canon 987, 1°).

1. By the name children are understood only descendants in the first degree; and this now also holds if the father is non-Catholic.¹

2. Under the name of non-Catholics come heretics and schismatics; most authors exclude unbelievers.

3. It suffices that either parent be non-Catholic, even if the mixed marriage was contracted with dispensation.²

4. The impediment ceases by the conversion of the parents. It is disputed whether it ceases by the death of the parents; but it seems to be denied, because that had no place in the old law, from which in doubt there must be no departure.

¹ Pontifical Commission, July 14, 1922 (A.A.S. 1922, p. 528).

² Pontifical Commission, October 16, 1919 (A.A.S. 1919, p. 478).

II. Men having a wife (canon 987, 2°). Without dispensation these cannot receive even a minor Order or tonsure itself, even if they are perpetually separated. But a married man who without apostolic dispensation has received major Orders, although in good faith, is prohibited from the exercise of those Orders (canon 132, § 3). Now:

1. A dispensation is not granted to a married man unless the wife consents and is prepared to enter religion or to emit a vow of chastity, at least for the time of the life of her consort, or unless the wife has perpetually lost the right to the conjugal debt.¹

2. A spouse who has received sacred Order is prohibited from the use of marriage (canon 1114).

¹ Ecclesiastical law, c. 4-6 X, 3, 32; Decree of Gratian, C. 27, q. 2, c. 19-26.

III. Those who hold an office or administration forbidden to clerics and for which they must render accounts, until, after the office and administration have been laid aside and the accounts rendered, they have become free (canon 987, 3°). Such an office is discharged, for example, by treasurers and depositaries of public money, notaries, tutors, curators (St. Alphonsus, III, 838). After an Order has been received, offices of this kind can be accepted only with the permission of the Ordinary (cf. canon 139, § 3).

IV. Slaves in slavery properly so called, before liberty has been accepted (canon 987, 4°).

V. Those who are bound by civil law to ordinary military service, before they have completed it (canon 987, 5°).

1. Those who by the law itself are called to care for the sick are not said to be bound to military service.

2. Annual exercises to which citizens are bound after ordinary service has been completed do not pertain to ordinary military service.¹

3. Those are also judged still bound by law to military service who perhaps will be called to military service, but are not yet called, either because they are unequal in age, or because they have been declared temporarily unfit.²

¹ Sacred Congregation of Religious, January 1, 1911 (A.A.S. 1911, p. 37).

² Pontifical Commission, June 2-3, 1918 (A.A.S. 1918, p. 344-345).

VI. Neophytes until, in the judgment of the Ordinary, they have been sufficiently proved (canon 987, 6°). Those are called neophytes who were converted to the faith in adult age and recently baptized; but not heretics recently converted to the faith who had at least probably been validly baptized. The establishment of this impediment corresponds to these words of St. Paul: "Therefore a Bishop must be... not a neophyte, lest, being lifted up into pride, he fall into the judgment of the devil."¹

¹ 1 Tim. 3:2-6.

VII. Those who labor under infamy of fact, while it endures, in the judgment of the Ordinary (canon 987, 7°). When infamy of fact is contracted, see in the treatise on ecclesiastical penalties (cf. canon 2293, § 3).