# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1862_S241
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Excerpts as Contributions to Pastoral Casuistry. 241

is given, there one can, there one will gird oneself for the fight; and the author
does not stand alone. There are still 100 other clergymen counted who stand with him
in this important matter. But the foremost combatant sits where all
his enemies are laid as a footstool for his feet.

Excerpts as Contributions to Pastoral Casuistry.

Can a man who, during the lifetime of his wife, committed adultery
with an unmarried person, after her decease, if he shows himself penitent,
be joined in marriage to that former person?

An instructive answer to this question is found in a theological
opinion which was rendered in the year 1708 by the theological faculty at
Leipzig, in a definite case laid before it. The opinion is as follows:

Right Reverend, etc. In a letter sent to us, dated Salzburg,
the 27th of March 1708, you have requested our theological opinion
in the case set forth below.

Ottilia, the wife of a tradesman, is sick, and, upon noticing
her approaching end, has Theodosius, her father confessor, called
to her; she thereupon reveals to him, under the pledge of silence,*) that her husband
Sulpitius, who had otherwise always meant well by her and by the children of her first marriage,
allowed himself, in drink, to be seduced by Satan, so that he
got with child Juliana, a girl of about 18 years, whom she had all but raised
and whom her son of her first marriage, Crispinus, had wished to marry
and had already set his heart upon; and that this girl had afterward been delivered away from home,
and that the child was still living, and that her son too had full knowledge of all this;
that she herself had sincerely forgiven her husband, who repented of it bitterly,
yet had found no peace in her conscience until she disclosed it to her father
confessor, hoping too that he would keep silent about it while she lived, but that should she die,
he might tell her husband of it and hold it before him, so that he might all the more
persevere in constant penitence. Thereupon Ottilia dies, and Theodosius
takes occasion to speak with Sulpitius, and finds that he does not deny the deed,
but rather repents of it with tears, and shows other good tokens
of a true repentance. In the course of this, however, the following occurs:
after some time Sulpitius comes to Theodosius and discloses
to him that he wishes to marry the Juliana whom he had weakened, and so bring her
back into honor again; for his stepson Crispinus would after all not take her,
and he himself would also be quite content should she be married by him.

The question now arises:

1. Whether Theodosius ought not to have advised against this marriage, quia Sulpitius
per adulterium Iulianam polluit?**)

*) Under the seal of secrecy.
**) Because Sulpitius has defiled Juliana through adultery. 16