Prepared by: Fr. Rex M. Mananzan, SJ LST — 14 February 20051. 1095, 1° - Lack of Sufficient Use of Reason: mental retardation, low IQ — morons, insanity (crazy persons), mongoloids, epileptics, identity disorder, and the like.
2.1095, 2° - Lack of Due Discretion (LDD): One has a sufficient reasoning capacity but at the moment of consent, it was impeded. In other words, one cannot consent to something that you do not know.
a. Immaturity: One who is below 23 if female or 25 if male, does not usually possess the needed maturity to consent to marriage.
b. Pressure to Marry: premarital sex, premarital pregnancy, shotgun marriage, parental arrangement, fear of embarrassment if marriage is not celebrated, unhappy home and the desire to escape, rebounding from a previously failed relationship, and the like.
c. Short courtship which does not enable the partners to know each other enough to consent to a lifetime partnership in marriage. One year is not enough to know each other. It should be more. Partners must also have sufficient time to get good advice, insight and sense of the situation, sound judgement and clear reasoning about the marriage partnership they are establishing.
d. Impeded knowledge regarding an essential quality of the other partner which would be necessary to make the consent: hidden venereal disease or other physical or psycho-emotional defects, hiding one’s real status in life, etc.
e. Questions normally asked to establish this incapacity: How mature is the person before marriage? Is the family dysfunctional? Was one pressured to consent to marriage by persons (like reverential fear of parents) or by circumstances (like pregnancy or poverty)? How free was one to enter the marriage? How long was the courtship? What was the nature of the courtship?
3. Lack of Due Competence (LDC - c.1095, 3°): One does not possess here the adequate will needed to consent due to psychological defects.
a. Examples of these psychological defects are: maniac-addict (sex, kiepto); spouse batterer be they physical, sexual (refusing sex unreasonably), verbal or psycho- emotional; schizophic; iiJToid; histrionic; narcissistic; antisocial;
-pd.cl’,\ . . sicç
borden mc; avoiaant; aepenuent; obsessive-compulsive; passive-aggressive, anxiety disorder, affective disorder, alcoholism, substance dependence, homosexuality, and the like.
b. Questions normally asked to establish this incapacity: Is the family dysfunctional? Was the psychological incapacity already present, at least, in an implicit way before marriage, and was further confirmed afler marriage; why did one marry the other at all?
