Heresy Must Be Abjured

4. When a dispensation is requested to allow a Catholic to marry a heretic or to remove some canonical impediment which exists between the contracting parties, neither the permission nor the dispensation is granted except with the addition of this expressed law or condition, namely that the heresy must first be abjured. Pope Innocent X was on his guard and ordered that such dispensations should not be granted at all unless there was proof, supported by authentic documents, that the heretical fault of the heterodox contracting party had been rejected under oath; this testimony was left us by Cardinal Albitius, at that time Assessor of the Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, in the tractate mentioned above, De Inconstantia in Fide, chap. 18, no. 44. Clement XI, in the Congregation of the Holy Office held in his presence on June 16, 1710, ordered the Archbishop of Malines to give no permission or dispensation for marriages to be celebrated between a contracting Catholic and a heretic unless the abjuration of heresy had indeed preceded; he ordered that the theologians who had opinions contrary to this practice be sharply admonished. Vicenzo Cardinal Petra recorded this in his Commentary on the Constitution XII in Suo C of John XXII, Operum, vol. 4, p. 76, no. 14.