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Author Topic: Does a potential spouse have a right to know sɛҳuąƖ history before marriage?  (Read 108091 times)

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Fr. Daniel Lord was a Jesuit before Vatican 2. He lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He devoted his whole life to guiding young people. He wrote dozens of books and pamphlets on youth, marriage, and family life.
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In addition to the spectacular Jesuit formation he received, he possessed a level of experience in the care of souls, and trust from his superiors, that no priest alive today could claim, let alone someone on an internet forum.
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Go with what Fr. Lord says.
See, I would want to actually read what Fr Lord said before going on what the OP said he said.  

Offline Yeti

  • Supporter
It's borderline misrepresentation, which is grounds for an annulment.
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No. The only kind of misrepresentation that would have been grounds for an annulment before Vatican 2 was error of identity, i.e. if someone claimed to be someone different from who they actually were. This doesn't mean someone claimed to be a millionaire and actually wasn't. It means someone claimed to be someone else, as in, I tell some woman I am Brad Pitt, and get a good make-up artist to make me look like him. It's a pretty far-fetched scenario, obviously, and so was basically every other annulment scenario in Catholic times. That's why there were only a few dozen annulments granted by Rome each year in the entire world before Vatican 2. I believe I heard the most common reason for an annulment by the Catholic Church was impotency at the time marriage was contracted.
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Remember the story of Jacob in the Old Testament? That is an example of personal identity being misrepresented. Jacob decided to marry Rachel, and received her from her father Laban in marriage. In the actual wedding ceremony, Laban had his other daughter Lia show up, claiming to be Rachel. She was heavily veiled, as was the custom, so Jacob couldn't see her face, but she lied and said she was Rachel. It's a little hard to know why Jacob didn't notice the voice sounded different, but anyway, he thought the person who made her promises to him was Rachel, due to a deliberate deception perpetrated against him.
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That's the only type of deception that would invalidate a marriage promise. I guess now in the Vatican 2 church they hand out annulments for any type of deception before marriage, but they don't accept what the Catholic Church teaches about the sacraments or much of anything else.


Änσnymσus

  • Guest
OP here. I was mistaken about the authorship. It was not a Fr. Lord pamphlet but rather QUESTIONS YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN ASK BEFORE MARRIAGE by Donald F. Miller, C.Ss.R.

Imprimi Potest: John N. McCormick, C.Ss.R, Provincial, St. Louis Province, Redemptorist Fathers November 20, 1961
Imprimatur: + Joseph Cardinal Ritter, Archbishop of St. Louis, November 24, 1961 

Here is the relevant text:

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Should an Engaged Girl Reveal Her Past? PART I 

Problem: I am engaged and looking forward to a very happy marriage. But there is one doubt in my mind that seems to cast a shadow over my happiness. Long before I met my fiance, I fell into sin with another person. This has long since been confessed and deeply repented. The doubt in my mind is whether I should tell my husband-to-be about this previous fall. Is such a confession necessary or even advisable for persons about to be married? I dread the thought of it; but do not want anything to stand in the way of our happiness. 

Solution: It is neither necessary nor advisable to make a confession of your past life to the man you are about to marry. You made your confession through the priest to God, and your sin was forgiven. The only lasting effect the sin should have on your life is to keep you humble, grateful for the forgiveness you received, and more and more dependent on God’s help to remain good. But there is no reason for your revealing the past to anyone. Sometimes a man who wants to marry a girl tries to insist that she tell him whether she had ever in her life lapsed from virtue. This is an unjust demand, an uncalled for probing into the secret and sacred conscience of another. A girl has no obligation of making a personal confession even in the face of such demands. Indeed, she may even recognize in such demands a danger sign: they may be motivated by an excessively jealous spirit that would cause her great sorrow after marriage. Even in the case that a boy or girl in love might suggest that they make mutual confessions to each other, the idea should be resisted and rejected. Lovers and engaged couples should be content to be able to say to each other that they cherish the grace of God and freedom from sin above all other goods, and that they will be loyal to each other for the whole of their lives. Moreover, it is more important that they help each other to avoid sin in their own pre-marriage association than that they worry about their own or their partner’s repented past.

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Should an Engaged Girl Reveal Her Past? PART II

Problem: We are several girls in our late teens who would like to disagree with an opinion you expressed several months ago. You said that a man had no right to ask a girl whom he wanted to marry whether she had previously fallen from virtue, and that the girl had no obligation of admitting anything about her past to her fiance. We think that if a man wants to know what kind of girl he is marrying he should be allowed to ask her about her past, and that she should honestly tell him. After all, it is important to a man to know that he is marrying a good girl. 

Solution: We are in perfect agreement with the statement that it is important for a man to know that he is marrying a good girl. It is the purpose of the period of company-keeping to provide a man with assurance on this point, and equally so to provide the girl with assurance that he is a good man. By going together for several months, a man and woman can learn all they need to know about the ideals and moral characters of each other, if both are interested enough in this matter to look for and draw out from the other the spiritual and moral principles that are considered of greatest importance. A girl who lacks character and sound moral principles will not be able to hide her lack from a man who really considers such things necessary for a happy marriage. And a man who has not acquired solid virtue will clearly manifest his weakness to a girl who realizes that without it a happy marriage could not be hoped for. This testing of each other’s characters on the part of a boy and girl keeping company does not require open and complete revelations of each one’s past. We have set it down, and we repeat, that it is a general presumption that it is not wise for two people preparing for marriage to make full confessions to each other. It is not good for a man to demand of a girl whom he might ask to marry him that she tell him whether or how she ever fell into sin in the past. In our experience, we have found that most men who insist on being told such things have had rather chequered careers themselves. themselves, and have a leaning toward an unhealthy, not to say morbid, kind of jealousy. There are exceptions, of course, and our presumption, that in general it is best to leave the past buried, leaves room for them. It still remains possible, we believe, for a man to learn all he needs to know about a girl, even up to whether she has ever been a sinner or not, without asking direct questions or demanding revelations. And it is possible for a girl to learn through company keeping whether the man she is going with hates sin, loves virtue, and is willing to face the sacrifices and responsibilities involved. The sad thing is that so many are not interested in these supremely important matters.

Änσnymσus

  • Guest
It's borderline misrepresentation, which is grounds for an annulment. 

How does a member of the Resistance get an annulment? 

That sounds like a pre-nup. Why not just do a virginity test?
"Virginity tests" are impossible to do on a man.  The conventional wisdom nowadays, is that demanding physical evidence of a woman's non-virginity (i.e., intact hymen) is an injustice, because any number of things can happen --- she might be born without one, it might be defective in some way, it may have been torn open through some physical injury, or what have you.  On the other hand, the wisdom nowadays is that some women's hymens can remain intact after intercourse --- not to get too crude, but they "stretch" --- and that hymens can grow back together.  Both would be more likely "if she'd only done it once or twice", as many claim.  Being jaundiced as I am about any propaganda coming from the secularized world, and a world that cares nothing about premarital virginity, I suspect that the "conventional wisdom" is exaggerated (to help women concoct lies about themselves, and to "slap" men to whom such things are important), but not entirely false.  Think of the non-Western cultures that demand premarital examination, and the consequences for women in those cultures who have lost or damaged their hymens through no fault of their own.