# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1855_S254
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

254 Excerpts as Contributions to Pastoral Casuistry.

to give their consent to betrothals confirmed by oath, namely when carnal relations have followed, when the children acknowledge their guilt and ask forgiveness, when the person with whom the betrothal was entered into is otherwise honorable and of equal social standing, when there seems to be no other way to counsel the children’s consciences and bring them peace, when the marriage has been consummated and children have been born of it, and the like. “The parents,” writes Bidenbach, “are to be admonished that, unless they have very weighty reasons, they should not lightly annul such oaths of their children, but should have consideration for the consciences of their own.” Nevertheless, we hold that if the parents wished to insist strictly upon their right, even their children’s sworn betrothals may be dissolved if the parents insist upon it; however, as Beust also piously advises, the children should be required to make a public declaration of repentance, to be read from the pulpit in a prescribed form, in which they ask forgiveness before the people for the offense they have caused.

We prove this opinion of ours against the Roman teachers of canon law: 1. From the manifest character of divine law in Numbers 30:4–6, from which we argue as follows: If a father can annul a vow that his daughter has made directly to God and confirmed by an oath, then he can certainly also annul a promise made to a human being, even if it has been confirmed by an oath. Now the first is true. Therefore, so is the second. Nor can it be urged that such a betrothal has become a marriage because of the carnal relations that followed it and therefore can no longer be dissolved; for we have shown above that divine law places it within the parents’ authority to decide whether or not they wish to give their daughter in marriage to the man who deflowered her. Compare Exodus 22:16. Consider together with this the example of Dinah in Genesis 34:8. — 2. From canon law. An oath that is contrary to good morals is not binding, nor may an oath be a bond of injustice; but it is contrary to good morals because it is contrary to divine law, and it is unjust and unlawful because children’s entering into marriage without their parents’ consent violates the law requiring due honor toward parents. An oath should have three companions: truth, right, and justice, so that if one of these companions is lacking, the oath does not bind the one who has sworn it. But in this oath, right is lacking, because the consent of a child who is under parental authority is not full and complete without the parents’ consent; justice is lacking because what the son or daughter has sworn is unjust and unlawful.... 3. From the principle of equivalence. For if betrothals entered into within degrees of kinship forbidden by divine law are invalid, even though they were confirmed by an oath, then surely also betrothals that violate the commandment requiring due honor toward parents