6. Spiritual Relationship and Difference of Religion

canon law regarding this impediment has been retained by the Protestant Church. The marriage impediment of the spiritual relationship has its basis in the code of Justinian (XXVI., v. 4), which prohibits marriage between a sponsor and the person to be baptized. In medieval

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canon law it was greatly extended. According to the decrees of the Council of Trent (sess. xxiv., can. 2), spiritual kinship is an impediment only to marriage between the one who baptizes or confirms and the sponsors on the one hand, and the person baptized or confirmed and his parents on the other hand. Evangelical agenda have sometimes prohibited marriages between sponsor and godchild; but in later Protestant Church law a spiritual relationship is no longer a marriage impediment. Difference of religion (cultus disparitas) did not become a public diriment impediment through a church law, but through a general ecclesiastical right prescriptive, and as such was acknowledged in the Protestant Church, although Luther repeatedly disapproved of it, in part overlooking the difference between contracting and continuing a marriage between Christians and non-Christians, and in part one-sidedly emphasizing the secularity of marriage. While the law of the State nowhere recognizes difference of religion as a marriage impediment, it is always to be considered an impediment to a religious wedding. The Church can not bless and consecrate a marriage in which one of her members regards it as quite immaterial for the closest union of life whether the other professes Christ or not. The mere difference of Christian confession, on the other hand, is considered even by the Roman Catholic Church merely as an obstructing impediment (see below on mixed marriages).

Physical incapacity to consummate the marriage by sexual union (impotentia cæundi

7. Impotence and Adultery

known to the other party at contracting the marriage, or not. Protestant doctrine and practise, on the other hand, have always held that annulment of marriage on the ground of impotence (or sterility) can be demanded by the healthy party only on condition that he (or she) contracted the marriage without knowing of the defect of the other party. Adultery (impedimentum criminis) is, according to the latest canon law, a public diriment impediment as regards marriage with the person accessory to adultery, in case either that the adulterers have promised to marry one another, or have actually contracted a marriage, or that one of the adulterers has successfully attempted the life of the injured party. In case one of a married pair is killed by the other with the assistance of a third person to render possible the marriage of the latter two, such an act, as a matter of course, is an impediment to marriage, even though only one party intended to make it possible when perpetrating the deed. The latest canon law on this point became the law of the Protestant Church, although Luther had objected: "Vice and sin are to be punished by other punishments than by prohibiting marriage."