It’s called obedience. The Church made the law and you are to follow it. The law can not be to your liking, but to use a disparaging term like “legal fiction” is not very edifying to say the least.
If you noticed, I questioned Ladislaus’ statement when he first posted it. When he showed me the Canon that proved his point, I accepted it without question.
"Legal fiction" is not a disparaging term. It's a term from common law. There's nothing disedifying about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_fictionAnother such legal fiction is treating children from putative marriages, later declared null, as being legitimate. If the marriage never existed, then of course they are bastards (another term that is merely a neutral statement of fact, viz. a child born out of wedlock, but that has become disparaging in common parlance), but for many reasons, the Church declares them to be considered legitimate. Aside from the social stigma attaching to bastardy, there could be some secular jurisdictions that would look to the Church, in the case of Catholics anyway, to decide whether a child is legitimate or not. (And it's never the child's fault.)
A
sanatio in radice is another example of a legal fiction in ecclesiastical law.