[230] _Ecclesiastical Review_, September, 1912.
[231] _Synopsis Rerum Moralium et Juris Pontificii_, 31st ed., n. 2425.
[233] _Nederlandische Katholische Stemmen_, January 15, 1911.
[234] _Analecta Ecclesiastica_, September, 1911, and _La Scuola Cattolica_, February, 1912.
[235] _La Scuola Cattolica_, February, 1912.
If a man or woman is impotent, the disability is an _impedimentum juris naturalis_, and as such it would nullify any marriage, no matter what the dispensation. There are two opinions among moralists as to the essence of canonical impotence.
I. Some hold that any permanent obstruction to fecundation, no matter in what stage of the physiological process or in what part of the genital tract it occurs, constitutes impotence. They maintain that a woman whose ovaries or uterus have been removed is impotent. Roman Congregations have promulgated several decrees in peculiar cases permitting the marriage of spayed women; but, these moralists say, it is not clear that in those special cases the entire ovary on each side of the whole uterus was taken out; they hold there is doubt as to the fact. And, since there is disagreement of moralists, the Holy Office or other congregations would give the same decision because of the _dubium juris_.
April 2, 1909, the Congregation on the Discipline of the Sacraments decreed that the marriage of a Spanish woman, from whom, according to the physician in charge of the case, the uterus and both ovaries had certainly been removed, should not be prevented.
February 3, 1887, the Holy Office made the same decree in the case of a woman from whom the uterus and both ovaries had been removed.
July 23, 1890, the Holy Office made the like decree under the same conditions.
July 31, 1895, the Holy Office permitted the marriage of a woman from whom both ovaries had been removed.
Another case, in 1902, in which the physician was not certain that the whole ovary on each side had been removed, was decided in the same manner.
There have been, then, four decisions so far permitting the marriage of women who lacked both ovaries, and three of these women lacked the uterus also. The Congregation of the Council has made four decisions in recent time forbidding the marriage of women because of impotence; March 21, 1863, a case in which there was neither vagina nor uterus; January 24, 1871, a case in which the vagina was only two inches in depth; September 7, 1895, a case in which the vagina was obliterated in greater part; December 16, 1899, a case in which the vagina was only five centimetres in depth.