Sinful Posting Of Nudity

[Humility]

I think you might be right, as long as someone isn’t hiding it specifically because he/she wants to marry someone and knows that that person will never agree to the marriage if they knew. If it’s just because it’s in the past, and he/she doesn’t want to revisit that part of his/her life anymore, that’s one thing. But a deliberate concealment in order for the express purpose to get someone to marry him/her seems like it could be a problem. But I’m not a canon lawyer and I don’t want to tell someone the wrong thing, so I’m going to delete my comments.

 

[MNathaniel]

No, you’re correct. The canon against fraud means that if a person has reason to believe (say, because their partner told them so) that their partner would ‘never marry’ someone who [XYZ], and in order to secure marriage with this person, one avoids disclosing that they have indeed [XYZ]? The marriage can later be annulled because it was secured by fraud.

Of course, it depends on a person having reason to believe XYZ is a marriage dealbreaker for the other person, and concealing it for that reason. And hopefully most people wouldn’t have a dealbreaker against a past sin such as this one, sincerely repented of.

But yeah, it’s certainly not true that we can just arbitrarily withhold uncomfortable information from our future spouse, if we have reason to believe they wouldn’t consent to marry us if they knew. Again though, I honestly wouldn’t think this situation would end up such a dealbreaker for most people. It’s not like gambling debts or ongoing pornography addiction or something.