Page:Pastoral Letter Promulgating the Jubilee - Spalding.djvu/52

Rh the civil authority. (Id, ibid.; Allocution Acerbissimum, 27th September, 1852.)

LXVIII. The Church has not the power of laying down what are diriment impediments to marriage. The civil authority does possess such a power, and can do away with existing impediments to marriage. (Let. Apost. Multiplices inter, 10th June, 1851.)

LXIX. The Church only commenced in later ages to bring in diriment impediments, and then availing herself of a right not her own, but borrowed from the civil power. (Let. Apost. Ad Apostolicæ, 22d August, 1851.)

LXX. The canons of the Council of Trent, which pronounce censure of anathema against those who deny to the Church the right of laying down what are diriment impediments, either are not dogmatic, or must be understood as referring only to such borrowed power. (Let. Apost. ibid.)

LXXI. The form of solemnizing marriage prescribed by the said Council, under penalty of nullity, does not bind in cases where the civil law has appointed another form, and where it decrees that this new form shall effectuate a valid marriage. (Id. ibid.)

LXXII. Boniface VIII. is the first who declared, that the vow of chastity pronounced at Ordination annuls nuptials. (Id. ibid.)

LXXIII. A merely civil contract may, among Christians, constitute a true marriage, and it is false, either that the marriage contract between Christians is always a sacrament, or that the contract is null if the sacrament be excluded. (Id. ibid., Letter to King of Sardinia, 9th September, 1852. Allocution Acerbissimum, 27th September, 1852; Multis gravibusque, 17th December, 1860.)

LXXIV. Matrimonial causes and espousals belong by their very nature to civil jurisdiction. (Let. Apost., 22d August, 1851. Allocution Acerbissimum, 27th September, 1859.)

N. B. Two other errors may tend in this direction, those upon the abolition of the celibacy of Priests, and the preference due to the state of marriage over that of virginity. These have been proscribed; the first in the Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846; the second in the Letters Apostolical "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.

LXXV. The children of the Christian and Catholic Church are not agreed upon the compatibility of the temporal with the spiritual power. (Let. Apost. Ad Apostolicæ, 22d August 1851.)