Can. 1057 §1. The consent of the parties, legitimately manifested between persons quali-fied by law, makes marriage; no human power is able to supply this consent.Arranging marriages would do much to solve the problems we face with the family in today’s society. Marriage would become less about one’s own wish fulfillment and more about the duty one owes to society, the Church and God.
I believe if we are honest about it the situation happens much more then we know. Except for the situation where they were tested for DNA (see my other post about this) there is no simple way to see if you are related to someone or not. We can only be sure of our birth mother (if not put up for adoption) is there are reliable witnesses to the birth. In Jewish tradition the line goes with the woman because they could see which birth canal the baby came from. Plain and simple.I’m suprised this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often in this kind of situation.
People tend to be attracted to those of similar appearance, and if they don’t know who their blood relatives are, you’d expect it to happen occasionally.
I don’t think either of these canons precludes arranged marriages.Can. 1057 §1. The consent of the parties, legitimately manifested between persons quali-fied by law, makes marriage; no human power is able to supply this consent.
Can. 1103 A marriage is invalid if entered into because of force or grave fear from without, even if unintentionally inflicted, so that a person is compelled to choose marriage in order to be free from it.
Don’t worry, in 20 years we’ll all have our DNA sampled at birth (if not before) and encoded on our national ID cards.Considering the number of marriages that occur every year and the know occurrence of this problem (once), I think it would be easier to just forget about it. Let’s not propose solutions in search of a problem. DNA is a slippery slope that could only lead to eugenics.
Just move on.
Nohome