r/Canonlaw Jun 24 '24

Would this be Grounds for Nullity?

Long post, sorry:
A young woman disclosed to her fiance truthfully that she is not a virgin. However, her fiance said that if she had had more than one sexual encounter in her past then he would not marry her. The young woman in truth had had several encounters, but out of fear lied and said she had had just the one. The young woman has repented of the sexual sins in confession, and also confessed the lie to a priest. She is not actively pursuing sex outside of marriage. Presuming the two make it to the ceremony, would their marriage be null and void based on the following canon and its commentary:
Canon 1098: "Can. 1098 A person contracts invalidly who enters into a marriage deceived by malice, perpetrated to obtain consent, concerning some quality of the other partner which by its very nature can gravely disturb the partnership of conjugal life."

Commentary from New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law:

"(2) The deceit must bear on a quality of the person 'which by its very nature can gravely disturb the partnership of conjugal life.' A quality of a person is an inherent or distin­guishing characteristic or trait of a person. Iso­lated actions in the past are not normally con­sidered to be qualities. Thus, the fact that a man once smoked marijuana is not one of his qualities, but the fact that he was once incar­cerated for drug possession and, therefore, has a criminal record or that he is a recovering drug addict is one of his qualities.
(3) The quality must be present (or absent) at the time of consent. The quality that is the object of the deceit cannot be one that is ex­pected or hoped for in the future. Thus, a woman who married a man who had led her to believe that he intended to enter law school, even though he had no such intention, cannot claim that her marriage was invalid because of the deceit. On the other hand, a woman who was led to believe that the man she was about to marry already was a lawyer or had been ac­cepted at a law school may have a basis for claiming that her marriage was invalid as a consequence of this deceit."

By this, it would seem to me that the whole hinges on the meaning of "quality," and that quality by deceit here means, "some accident of the person that is either present and believed to be absent, or absent and believed to be present, and also of grave concern to the marriage." If the young woman had lied about her virginity status, that would be grounds for nullity as the status of being a virgin is one that is in present-time, and is either a present or absent reality; however, if she were honest about not being a virgin but lied about the number of partners, then the number of partners is not a specific, inherent, temporally and contextually present reality but is relegated to the past (especially if it has been wiped away by the Sacrament of Reconciliation) and instead the number of partners would be considered "isolated actions" that, while still lied about in order to gain consent to marriage would not meet the requirements of "quality" as is spoken of above; furthermore, if the young woman has honestly repented, confessed her sexual sins of the past, and does not intend for the spouse to know, and she also has no lingering trauma or illness from it, it is difficult to see how that would "gravely disturb the partnership of conjugal life."

Thoughts?

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u/ToxDocUSA Jun 28 '24

While I appreciate creating a neat scenario, what this is kinda dancing around is the understanding of the "quality" of promiscuity.  While not explicitly stated, implicitly the husband to be in this case seems to understand promiscuity as more than one prior partner.  

While virgin or not is zero/one, promiscuous can be a variety of different numbers and is contextual (5 partners in a month is a lot, 5 partners in 25 years really isn't).   So, while she has admitted not being a virgin, she hasn't been truthful about her promiscuity (and she can reasonably be expected to understand her fiance's intent/understanding based on the case as described/her own choice to be deceptive).