10. The Removal of Impediments

The removal of impediments takes place of itself where they are based on transient reasons, although this does not validate a marriage contracted under conditions invalidated because of impediments. Private impediments arising from lack of consent or faulty consent can be removed only by later full consent of the parties concerned. If, however, the marriage is to become valid, Roman Catholic practise requires a renovatio consensus in the Tridentine form, where this has been introduced, unless the impediment has been kept secret. Public impediments which can not be removed of themselves can be removed only by dispensations; but this course is possible only in cases which are not considered to be based on divine law. Roman Catholic practise, therefore, absolutely denies the possibility of dispensation in the case of an impediment of an existing marriage, or of relationship in the direct line and the first like degree of the collateral line. On the other hand, the impediments of difference in religion of affinity proper in the direct line, and of crimen ex occisione coniugis cum adulterio later becoming publicly known are held to be only generally incapable of dispensation. By the third canon of the twenty-fourth session of the Council of Trent it was expressly declared that the Church can grant dispensations in certain degrees of consanguinity and affinity mentioned in Leviticus. In the Evangelical Church all Mosaic prohibitions of affinity and relationship, usually with generalizing extensions, were formerly considered as incapable of dispensation, with the exception of marriage with a brother's widow, from which the law itself granted a certain degree of dispensation in the levirate marriage. In more recent times it has become the prevalent opinion in the Evangelical Church that only the impediments of relationship and affinity in the direct line and of consanguinity in the first degree of the collateral line are absolutely debarred from dispensation. In the Roman Catholic Church the pope has the exclusive right of granting dispensations from all diriment impediments, as well as from the obstructing impediments of mixta religio and of the simple vows of perpetual chastity or of entrance into a religious order. All other dispensations are granted by the bishops, each in his own diocese, although the pope delegates to the bishops the exercise of varying portions of the power of dispensation reserved for him.