Marriage is an intimate interpersonal bond, a juridic reality, between a man and a woman, who are legally habiles, and it comes into being through their mutual, free and irrevocable consent expressed in accord with the norm of law (cf. CIC, c. 1057; CCEO, c. 817). This mutual consent can be affected by several intrinsic and external factors which can render it null or invalid. One among these factors is grave fear imposed from without, which the person is not able to resist except by choosing marriage, and this no doubt invalidates the marriage. One form of grave fear implied in canon 1103 of the Latin Code and canon 825 of the Eastern Code is reverential fear. The effect of reverential fear on the choices one makes is determined largely by the culture of people.
The system of arranged marriages is so deeply rooted in Indian culture that, even today, almost ninety-five percent of the marriages are contracted in accord with that system. Although this system has its own merits within the context of a particular culture, it is not without its negative impact on the freedom of the Christian faithful in the choice of their life-partners. This is particularly evident in cases of reverential fear.
The specific question we responded to in our thesis is: What is the impact of reverential fear, which is deeply rooted in the Indian culture, on matrimonial consent? We have organized our response to this question under four sub-questions and the response to these questions is developed in four chapters.
In the first chapter we deal with the interpretation of ecclesial law in light of culture. The second chapter deals with the nature and the elements of matrimonial consent. The third chapter is a study of reverential fear as a ground of marriage nullity with particular reference to the factors that underlie reverential fear in the Indian cultural context. The focus of the fourth chapter is canonical jurisprudence on reverential fear.
What we have discovered in our study is that there is a very close link between culture and law, and that a proper understanding of the cultural background of a person or of a community is very important to provide a just and equitable interpretation of law, marriage law in particular, and to apply it to a concrete case.
Hence, a careful analysis of various cultural factors which impinge on matrimonial consent leads us to conclude that cultural factors can have a serious impact on the consent of the spouses and, indeed, the culturally rooted reverential fear can substantially affect the freedom of choice of marriage itself and/or of the marriage partner.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/30008 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Marattil, Jose |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 283 p. |
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