Age of Marriage Under Christian Law
We have shown how the Jewish Encyclopedia says that under Jewish Law girls can
marry at the age of twelve or even younger than that; let us now see what the Catholic
Encyclopedia says of Christian laws with regards to marriage. The Catholic
Encyclopedia says:
The marriageable age is fourteen full years in males and twelve full years in
females, under penalty of nullity (unless natural puberty supplies the want of
years [i.e. if puberty occurs before the age of twelve])… The canonical age holds
in England, Spain, Portugal, Greece (Ionian Isles excepted, where it is sixteen and
fourteen), and as regards Catholics even in Austria. While in some parts of the
United States the canonical marriage age of fourteen and twelve still prevails, in
others it has been enlarged by statutes.
(Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01206c.htm)
Elsewhere, the Catholic Encyclopedia says:
By the common law, the age at which minors were capable of marrying, known as
the age of consent, was fixed at fourteen years for males and twelve years for
females. Marriages under the age of seven years for both were void, but between
seven and the age of consent [14 for males, 12 for females] the parties could
contract an imperfect marriage, which was voidable but not necessarily void.
(Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09691b.htm)
Although twelve was the general guideline, Christian fathers were allowed to marry their
daughters off even before that. We read:
Medieval Christianity continued to maintain the age of twelve as a minimal age
for females to enter into marriage. However, even this low age limit was not
absolute. Using natural law logic, Catholic authorities argued that the decisive
factor which determined a child's readiness for marriage and sexual relations was
the onset of puberty, and not necessarily age as such. According to one Catholic
scholar, “If it could be satisfactorily proved that puberty . . . was actually attained
by the boy before the completion of his fourteenth year, or by the girl before the
completion of her twelfth year, then . . . the party could enter upon a valid
marriage.” [1]
(Mark E. Pietrzyk, http://www.internationalorder.org/scandal_response.html)
Similar to Jewish Law, Christian Law differentiated between the minimum age of
marriage and the absolute minimum age of marriage. Twelve years old was the
minimum age of marriage, called the age of consent; in other words, a girl had to be
twelve years old before should could arrange her own marriage. But the absolute
minimum age of marriage was in fact seven years of age, during which time her father
could arrange her marriage without her permission. In the Journal of Psychology and
Human Sexuality, we read:
Age of Consent: A Historical Overview
Age of Consent throughout history has usually coincided with the age of
puberty although at sometimes it has been as early as seven…The Roman
tradition served as the base for Christian Europe as well as the Christian Church
itself which generally, essentially based upon biological development, set it at
12 or 14 but continued to set the absolute minimum at seven. In the past
century there has been a tendency to raise the age of consent but the reasons for
the change have not always been clear and the issue has been further complicated
by the reluctance of many contemporary historians to recognize what the actual
age of consent in the past has been. This failure has distorted the importance of
biology on age of consent in the past.
(Age of Consent: A Historical Overview
http://www.haworthpress.com/store/Ar...XH16E3FKBF7Q9P
3MKLPC82LUJNKC41U5&ID=87429)
Saint Thomas Aquinas, considered by Catholics to be the greatest theologian of all time,
wrote in The Summa Theologica:
If the parties are betrothed by another person [i.e. the father] before they reach the
age of puberty, either of them or both can demur; wherefore in that case the
betrothal does not take effect, so that neither does any affinity result therefrom.
Hence a betrothal made between certain persons by some other takes effect, in so
far as those between whom the betrothal is arranged do not demur when they
reach the proper age, whence they are understood to consent to what others have
done.
(The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas,
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5043.htm)
In other words, pre-pubertal marriages arranged by the father are recognized by the
Church. Once the girl reaches puberty, she has the option of nullifying the marriage.
However, there is a big catch to this: if the man has sex with the pre-pubertal girl, then
she can no longer nullify the marriage. Catholic popes argued that even if marriage took
place before twelve years of age and before puberty, then such a marriage would still be
binding by the law. We read:
Sexual intercourse which took place before marital age limits or puberty was not
necessarily illicit or sinful. On the contrary, some popes ruled that intercourse
below the age of twelve/fourteen had the effect of sealing a marriage contract, as
long as such intercourse took place after the age of discretion, which was seven.
[2] Once intercourse had taken place, the marriage could not be annulled.
(Mark E. Pietrzyk, http://www.internationalorder.org/scandal_response.html)
This is a very important point, and shatters the glass house that the Christians live in.
The popes—who, due to the backing of the Holy Ghost, are considered infallible when
they issue such religious edicts—ruled that a girl could be married off after the age of
[2] Rush, 32-34. 17
The Islamaphobe’s Glass House Hashimi
seven, before the age of consent. In other words, she could be marriedللمزيد من مواضيعي
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28.06.2013, 23:03
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