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Summary. The prohibitions
against marriage in the second and third degrees of affinity and against the
union of the offspring from second marriages to a relative of the first usband,
are removed. This prohibition does not apply beyond the fourth degree of
consanguinity and affinity.
Text. It must not be deemed
reprehensible if human statutes change sometimes with the change of time,
especially when urgent necessity or common interest demands it, since God
himself has changed in the New Testament some things that He had decreed in the
Old. Since, therefore, the prohibition against the contracting of marriage in
secundo et tertio genere affinitatis and that against the union of the
offspring from second marriages to a relative of the first husband, frequently
constitute a source of difficulty and sometimes are a cause of danger to souls,
that by a cessation of the proibition the effect may cease also, we, with the
approval of the holy council, revoking previous enactments in this matter,
decree in the resent statute that such persons may in the future contract
marriage without hindrance. The prohibition also is not in the future to affect
marriages beyond the fourth degree of consanguinity and affinity; since in
degrees beyond the fourth a prohibition of this kind cannot be generally
observed without grave inconvenience. This quaternary number agrees well with
the prohibition of corporal wedlock of which the Apostle says that "the
wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and in like manner the
husband also hath not power of his own body, but the wife" (I Cor. 7: 4);
because there are four humors in the body, which consists of four elements.
Since therefore the prohibition of conjugal union is restricted to the fourth
degree, we wish that it remain so in perpetuum, notwithstanding the
decrees already issued relative to this matter either by others or by
ourselves, and should anyone presume to contract marriage contrary to this
prohibition, no number of years shall excuse him, since duration of time does
not palliate the gravity of sin but rather aggravates it, and his crimes are
the graver the longer he holds his unhappy soul in bondage .[ cf. I Lat, canon
5].
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